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How to Make Pot Rack From an Old Futon Frame

Jul 21 | 5 minutes read
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The Best Pot Rack

Storing pots is a pain. They’re heavy, bulky, don’t necessarily stack well, and when you need one, you don’t want to have to move other heavy pots to get to it. Some people have large kitchens and drawers dedicated to pots, others use … the hanging pot rack (sounds of doom and gloom).

I came up with an alternate option that doesn’t use much space and up-cycled a piece of furniture in the process. It’s really easy. Here’s how I did it, and maybe you can have a variation on your own.

Bad-pot-rack-fancy-jp

Hanging metal pots from the ceiling is an exercise in just waiting for you to clank your delicate skull into them. This storage method has been a common fixture in most houses that I’ve lived in. It’s almost a necessary evil. Worse yet are the pot racks that are over your stove. The precariously placed pots, with 50 lbs of metal hanging from the ceiling. They also catch the atomized scalding oil from what you’re cooking which leaves the nastiest of residues on your pots.

The push for this project was really the fact that I had held onto this futon frame from IKEA for a while, and didn’t want to get rid of it. It was solid wood (rare), with nicely finished joins. It seemed such a shame to just toss, but I had held onto it for way longer than I needed to, and its time had come. Use it or lose it.

That’s when it came to me: If I could mount it on the wall, so that I could put hooks on it, I may be able to hang pots from it! Let’s give this a shot!

I looked around the internet for “pot hooks” that would fit and kept being disappointed at how overpriced they were. Someone from business school must’ve come up with the idea of giving away pot racks but selling the hooks for a premium.

I started thinking, if I printed them thick enough, I bet they could hold a pot. So I started with the most basic of shapes, keeping the center of gravity as close to the base as possible.

Taking measurements of the slats, I came up with a basic hook that would let me drop it over the top of the wooden slat, with just enough of a protrusion on the bottom to hold it in place. I figured that I would make a fancier one once this one failed, but the simple design just worked.

Once I printed the hook out and tried it out on a few pots, I realized that the “hook holes” in my various pot handles weren’t all the same. I needed to make a few modifications to fit all of my pots. Some needed to be thinner (which is easy enough, especially in tinkercad). Making a design thinner or thicker is as simple as finding the dimension and adjusting the number. Done.

I also needed to extend the hook out for large handled pots, so they would sit flat to the rack. I extended the hook away from the base, but also thickened the support so that it couldn’t bend the plastic over time.

I also printed my hooks without any hollow core, since I wanted to preserve as much strength as possible.

Medium sized hook Medium sized hook

Larger hook Larger hook for handled pots

In my case, the entire frame was fairly self-contained and looked good as-is. I needed to saw off a couple of dowels that were sticking out, but that was about all of the prep work that I did for the rack.

I wanted some flexibility with mounting the rack, plus it was really heavy to hold up while trying to screw perfectly to the wall. For this reason, I decided to first mount a couple of 1-inch thick strips of wood to the plaster/concrete wall. These strips were easier to drill and hold for exact placement with the plaster wall mount screws. I spaced them the exact distance as the width of the rack, and attached them to the wall. Then I simply screwed the frame directly to the mount (pre-drilling holes to reduce the chance of wood splitting)

The 1 inch strips ended up having an additional benefit – I was able to slide the pot lids into them as well. Big win! That’s always a flaw with hanging racks.

mount screws Testing the weight I mounted the rack to the wall and started a weight test to see if the brackets would bend. Nothing, no movement. I printed these from PETG, since it is supposed to have greater strength and durability. I’m not sure if that was required, but PETG worked great.

In the two years since I’ve created this, I’ve kept very heavy cast iron pots on hooks with no problems whatsoever. I’ve never had a pot fall off, and the use of space is just amazing. This was a completely unused space in my kitchen, but I needed to keep it free as a walking space. Now, I can place all of my pots (and lids!) in a location that’s not in the way and still very close to the stove.

All of the pots

I know that newer futon racks may not be constructed in the same way, but I feel like the concept can still be adapted for different style futon frames. You will need to adjust the hooks to fit for the frame that you find/have, but you can Tink this design, ungroup to see how it’s constructed, and modify as you need. I’ve used basic block and triangle shapes, so modifications should be easy.

Enjoy! Please comment here or on Thingiverse if you like my design.

If you have a frame and can get the measurements, but don’t have a 3D printer, send me a note and I will happily work with you to print out versions that work for you.