When you decide to build your own wine rack, you can either select ready-made wine rack plans, or choose to design and build your own wine rack. Either way, the entire process can be both fun and bewildering. On one hand, you want to build a wine rack that really suits your own needs. On the other hand, you can't help being swamped by the immense design possibilities.

To cut down on confusion when browsing through wine rack plans to build your own wine rack, carefully consider the exact or likely items to be stored, and the space that the finished wine rack will occupy. When going through your wine rack plans, note the dimensions such as wine bottles, wine cases and wine glasses to be stored.

In many cases when you build your own wine rack, you can't be exactly sure what your finished wine rack will hold. In that case, it would be wise to choose a wine rack plan that builds in as much flexibility as possible, or at least some form of flexibility. incorporating drawers and cabinets of different dimensions. Drawers provide great storage because they'll hold so many different items while keeping them clean and accessible, but out of sight. Cabinets are easy to build and can be used to display your collections if you don't install doors.

Designing To Fit A Particular Space

If you design and build your own wine rack to suit a particular space, you'll want to fit the space visually. When you work on your wine rack plans, be careful not to span the entire space available. Do leave a bit of room on either side and above to create a visual frame of sorts. Often, you may want to match existing cabinetry, such as a wine cabinet cabinetry, such as building a wine cabinet to serve as a dedicated base cabinet that matches the style of your kitchen or living room.

When you build your own wine rack, you can sometimes borrow design elements from a nearby piece of furniture, such as a particular edging profile or door frame treatment. As part of your wine rack plan, you can personalize your wine rack further by "signing" it with your own custom wood pulls or faux finish.

Allowing for Future Expansion

Don't forget to plan ahead, especially if you have more than one wine collector in the family! You may think you'll never buy more than 48 bottles of wine at a single shot when you first build your own wine rack. Uh huh. In any case, incorporate some extra (preferably a lot more) space from the start. And preferably whether you choose from ready-made wine rack plans or come up with your own wine rack plans, choose a design that still looks great as you add more units.

How to Dress Up Your Wine Rack

Do you know that when you build your own wine rack, you can make it look really expensive and classy? You can dress up your wine rack relatively inexpensively by using veneer. In case you didn't know, wood veneer is real wood!

Veneer is a thin slice of wood cut from a log with a slicing, peeling, or sawing machine. It is used on plywood, fine furniture, and laminated shapes for decorative and architectural purposes. Before a log is cut into veneer, it is often steamed or soaked in a bath of very hot water.

This "cooking" process softens the log so that veneers can be sliced without tearing and splitting. After the veneer is sliced, it's pressed flat between heated platens and bundled into stacks in the same order that it was removed from the log.

Veneer opens a whole new world of woodworking to even the most experienced craftsperson. With an exotic veneer, simple wine rack projects can be turned into works of art. In fact, a highly figured veneer can often be the qualifying characteristic that makes one wine rack project stand well above the rest.

Veneer gives you a unique opportunity to work with some of the most beautiful and exotic woods in the world without having to dip into your retirement account. Wood veneer has several distinct advantages over solid lumber that can't be overlooked. For example, veneering allows you to match an exposed back panel to its case wood without having to buy an entire piece of expensive hardwood plywood. It is these advantages that have brought the art of veneering into most professional cabinet and furniture shops.

The good news is that with the right tools, veneering is relatively easy and it's now becoming a mainstream technique used by weekend warriors to turn even the most mundane wine rack projects into heirloom quality masterpieces.

About the Author

Celine Yong is a wine and DIY enthusiast who can show you how to build a wine rack in less than four hours by choosing from twelve wine rack plans and more than twenty wine rack designs! Visit http://www.howtomakeawinerack.com to subscribe for free to her 4-part mini-course and free wine rack plan worth $37.