DIY Pallet Wine Rack | Cool Upcycled Furniture Ideas

DIY Pallet Wine & Stem Rack

Looking for DIY pallet furniture ideas and cool homemade home decor? We love repurposed wood projects and this pallet wine and stem rack make a super addition to any home. Easy to build, you will have a great looking wine rack in about 2 hours when you follow our easy step by step tutorial.

All you need for this pallet wine rack are a few common tools,  wooden pallets, and screws.

Supplies for this wood pallet project:

  • 5 Pallet Boards (pulled from any pallet you can find)
  • 1 1/2 Wooden Pallet Rails (see below for identifying)
  • 2 1/2-Inch Screws (dozen or so)
  • A Chop Saw or Circular Saw (or a handsaw if you’re old school)
  • A Power Drill
  • A Jigsaw
  • A Carpenter’s Square

Stemware Rack Attachment (Optional)

  • 2 Additional Wooden Pallet Boards

Instructions

Step 1: Gather your pallet wood

For the Wine Rack portion of this DIY, you’re going to need 5 Full Wooden Pallet Boards and 1 and 1/2 Wooden Pallet Rails. The rails are the curved pieces that sit below the pallet and hold the boards together. If you plan on decking your wine rack out with a stemware attachment, have two more wooden pallet boards on hand.

 

A pile of reclaimed wood.
Get yourself some reclaimed wood.

Step 2: Cut pallet pieces to size

Use a saw to cut the rail in half. These pieces are going to get cut again later on, so this cut doesn’t have to be perfect. Just eyeball the midpoint and cut it. We used a Chop Saw to cut ours, but a circular or handsaw will work just fine. Reclaimed wood about to get chopped in half.

Step 3: Setting the sides & making spacers

Place one of your cut pieces onto one of the boards.

The beginning stage of a wood pallet wine rack.
Make it look like this.

Measure the distance between the piece and the TOP edge of the board. Pallet wood and a measuring tape.

Step 4: Setting the spacers

The distance between the edge of the piece and the board is how wide your spacer needs to be. In our case, we needed a 1 ½ inch spacer. You are going to cut the spacer from the one-foot piece of rail, so find this distance on the rail with a measuring tape and mark it with a pencil. A pencil making a mark on some pallet wood.

Step 5: Lining things up

Use a piece of scrap wood to draw a straight line across your spacer. Reclaimed wood with a line on it.

Perfectly proportioned hand marking up some pallet wood.
You can use a piece of wood to help you draw a straight line.

Step 6: Cut and run

Cut along the line. Bad boy piece of pallet wood with a tattoo looking all Align your spacer with one of the rails you’ve cut and place a mark where the bevel begins.

Pallet Wood getting penciled up.
It’s almost impossible to screw this step up.

Two pieces of reclaimed wood sitting side by side.

Step 7: Work your way down

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A line getting drawn on some pallet wood.

Use a Square to draw a straight line across the spacer. Measure and mark the same distance from the other end of the spacer. You’re going to cut two spacers from this one piece.

Art on a piece of reclaimed wood.
The scribbled part is going in the trash.

Step 8: Mounting the front

After you make the cuts, take a spacer and align it with a rail piece and a board. Mark where the spacer meets the edge of the board. Pallet wood being assembled into a wine rack.

Two spacers made out of pallet wood.
Do this with both spacers.

Step 9: Getting fancy

Draw a curve from the top rear corner of the spacer to the line that you’ve just drawn.

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Just sketch it. It doesn’t have to be pretty. Reclaimed wood with some markings on it.

Cut along the line with a jigsaw. The cut doesn’t have to be perfect. It will still look cool.

Check out DIY Pallet Wine Rack | Cool Upcycled Furniture Ideas at https://diyprojects.com/diy-pallet-wine-rack-cool-upcycled-furniture-ideas/
Your spacer just got a sweet haircut. Pallet Wood that’s just been reshaped.

Do this with the other spacer as well. Try to keep the curvatures identical by using your cut piece as a template and tracing it onto the other spacer. Pallet Wood getting marked with a pencil.

Two spacers getting made for a pallet project.

Step 10: Aligning and mounting rails

Align one of the rails with a board as shown. Some more reclaimed wood.

Drill two pilot holes through the board and into the rail.

Reclaimed wood getting drilled.
Use a small bit for your pilot holes.

Fasten the board to the rail with two screws.

A screw going into some reclaimed wood.
Fasten the board with wood screws.

Do this for both sides. Halfway through a wood pallet project. Some pallet wood looking good.

Lay the wine rack face down and align a board with the bottom and side rail as shown. Drill two pilot holes. Reclaimed wood getting drilled.

Two good looking holes in some pallet wood.
Nicely done.

Fasten the board into place with two screws. Two screws going into some pallet wood.

Step 11:

Repeat for the other side. A repurposed wood wine rack being made.

Step 12: Bringing it all together

Place your spacers in front of the side rails. Align a board with the rest of the wine rack as shown. A pallet wood wine rack from the side.

Some good looking repurposed wood.
Starting to look like a wine rack.

Drill two pilot holes through the front board, the spacer and the side rail. Two holes in a pallet wood board.

Step 13: Fasten ‘er up

Fasten the board to the wine rack with two screws.

Two screws going into a reclaimed wood board.
That board is going nowhere.

Repeat for the other side of the board.

Step 14: Almost there

Lay the wine rack face down and place a board a few inches above the lower backboard. Drill one pilot hole (the one closest to the lower backboard) straight into the side rail. Drill a second pilot hole into the side rail at an angle, so that the screw doesn’t come out of the other side when you screw it in.

Drilling a pilot hole into a wine rack.
Drill your pilot hole at an angle.

Fasten the board to the side rail with two screws. A screw fastening a board to a pallet wine rack.

Step 15: Repeat

Repeat for the other side of the board.

An almost complete wood pallet wine rack.
Your wine rack is almost finished!

Step 16: Finishing touches

Cut the side rails where the upper backboard ends. Incredibly sexy arms holding a reciprocating saw. Winerack66

A complete wood pallet wine rack
Cut them flush with the top board.

Now you have an awesome wine rack. Why stop here? If you’re feeling dangerous, you should add a stemware rack below it.

 

Step 17: Making a home for your glassware

Cut some spacers from a board. Make them about one inch wide. They don’t have to be perfect. They don’t even have to be straight. Check the thickness of your wine glass stems. You may need to cut four spacers and stack them to create enough room for your wine glasses to fit in the stemware rack.

Reclaimed wood with two lines on it.
Make your spacers about an inch wide.

Step 18: Marking your cuts

With another board and a measuring tape, place a mark every four inches on a board. The pencil marks are hard to see in the picture, but there are markings at 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 inches.

Reclaimed wood with pencil marks on it.
The markings are hard to see, but they’re there.

Use a square to draw straight lines at each mark. Winerack47

A square being used to make a straight line on some reclaimed wood.
Make that line straight.

Step 19: Connecting the lines

With a piece of scrap wood, draw a straight line across the board that intersects the lines you just drew. Draw this line so that the lines intersect closer to one side of the board than the other as shown. Winerack52

Reclaimed wood getting intimate.
Draw a straight line.

Where the lines intersect, drill a hole with a 3/8th drill bit. Reclaimed wood getting drilled.

Reclaimed wood getting drilled by a total stud.
Drill the holes where the lines intersect.

Step 20: Do for each hole

For each hole, use a piece of wood to draw a pair of straight lines that intersect the hole tangentially.

Two masculine hands drawing lines on reclaimed pallet wood.
Tangentially is a funny word.

Cut along these lines with a saw. Winerack58 Winerack59

A foot.
Use both hands when cutting with a jigsaw.

The wood between the lines should fall out if you cut it right. But if it does not, you can tap it out with a hammer and a screw. Winerack61

A carpenter taking a hammer and nail to some reclaimed wood.
If the piece doesn’t fall out, make it pay.

Do this for each hole.

Reclaimed wood with notches in it.
Your wine glasses are going to slip into these notches.

Step 21: Affixing rim

Drill two pilot holes through the spacer, the notched board and the bottom side rail. It’s easier to align the spacer if you place it on the bottom of the notched board when you’re drilling, as shown. Just make sure to remember that it’s going to go between the notched board and the wine rack when you fasten everything together. Also, make sure to avoid drilling your pilot holes where the screws are on the bottom of the wine rack!

A man drilling a pilot hole into some reclaimed wood with impeccable form.
Drilling pilot holes keeps the wood from splitting when you fasten your screws.

Step 22: Almost there

Fasten the stemware rack to the wine rack with two screws.

Reclaimed wood repurposed into a wine rack.
A screw clutching onto its last moment of dwindling freedom.

Step 23: Repeat and…SCENE!

Do this for both sides. You’re done! Now that you’re so proud of your new wine rack that you can hardly contain it, deceptively invite your friends over to “catch up over wine,” stand with them in front of your new rack and stroke your chin while taking an exceptionally long time to decide between the “Zin” and the “Rah.”

Repurposed wood wine and stemware rack hanging from a wall with wine in it.
Beautiful enough to display where everyone can see.

Repurposed wine and stemware rack from the front.

Wood Pallet Wine Rack from the the bottom.
The bottom of your stemware rack.

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