Charred Coat Hooks

Difficulty:

Cost:

$2.50

A lot of thought has been put into this; our very first post! It's our debut in the blogging world, a coming out of sorts and we knew it had to be a good one. So with a big sheet of paper, felt pens and some brainstorming reminiscent of primary school, we decided on spoon hooks! They're useful, rustic looking and can be made with sustainable, cheap materials. 

To begin our journey we headed into town to scope out the local op shops and hunt for some spoons. On our way we came across something commonly seen in Dunedin; a charred mattress base. Confused? So are we sometimes. It is an (increasingly un-) common past time of intoxicated students to burn flat furniture, especially couches!  

Luckily for us the base had been left in the Alice and Devika's yard and they were more than happy for us to take it off their hands.

So we took to dismantling the base and loosening the wood from the rusty old springs.

Et voila! Perfectly good, authentically scorched lengths of wood that cost us nothing more than rusted fingers and dirty sweaters. 

We also managed to pick up a lovely bunch of spoons for 50c each, taking the total project cost to $2.50, pretty economical really. 

Materials:

Spoons

Wood

Tools:

Hammer

Saw

Superglue

Please excuse the lack of glue and presence of nails in the below photo, we initially planned on nailing the spoons to the wood, but found that spoons were much stronger than nails and glue was a far easier option. 

Method:

Hammer those spoons flat! We did this outside on the concrete of our yard, but it did leave some dents so we wouldn't recommend doing this anywhere too pristine.  

Bend the spoon at the beginning of the handle.

And just like that you have a nifty set of hooks.

Next we took to our wood, sawing off a piece that looked about the right length.

Initially we were going to paint the wood a pretty colour, but we decided the charred look of our piece was so pretty and authentic itself that we skipped that step and just sanded the ends. If your wood isn't quite so cute and quirky then by all means paint it to your hearts content! Make sure you sand it well though so you you have a nice smooth surface to paint on. 

After discarding the nails idea we found some super glue and gave that a go. We recommend Araldite,  which you can get from the hardware store. Just make sure you mix it together before spreading it on your spoon.

Then simply press your spoons onto your wood and wait for three days for the glue to harden. You might need to put something on the scoopy parts of the spoons to weigh them down and make sure they don't move while they're drying. 

We used a combination of elastic bands and shot glasses... students. 

And there you have it, a lovely, rustically charred, perfectly functional set of hooks for less than it costs to shout your friends a round of fluffies at your local cafe.

Happy hanging,