DIY Peg Rack

Hello! Many years ago, I built a table and floating shelves we use for our coffee bar. Recently, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to have some hooks in this area, so I decided to make a peg rack with materials I already had on hand!

Here is the area I talked about above. This is part of our dining room. We store all our hot drink things like coffee, tea and hot chocolate in the top two baskets and my daughter’s arts and crafts things in the bottom two baskets. I want an area to hang drying herbs, greeting/holiday cards and my daughter’s artwork, so a peg rack under the bottom shelf should work out perfect!

I chose to use a 1x4 pine board for my peg rack because that’s what I had on hand. I cut it to the same length as my floating shelves (48”) with my miter saw. I decided to space my pegs 6” apart, so I marked the center of my board every 6” with a pen.

I decided to make a template for my peg holes instead of having to measure the exact center and worry about my drill bit walking for each hole. I used a scrap 1x4 for my template. I marked the center vertically and predrilled a hole with a 7/64” drill bit.

Since my pegs are 1/2”, I used a 1/2” drill bit to drill over top of my first hole. Predrilling with the smaller drill bit first gave the tip of my 1/2” drill bit a spot to rest, so it didn’t move around while I was drilling my second hole.

I clamped my template to my 48” board over top of my pen marks to drill 1/2” holes every 6”.

I tried not to drill all the way through the board just so my glue had a well to sit in, but I did go through in a couple holes. It’s not a big deal either way, I just had to clean the back of the board up in a couple spots.

Next, I sanded my board with 220 after drilling all my holes. If you hate the dust from sanding, try hooking a shop vacuum up to your sander!

I test fitted each of the pegs to make sure all holes were deep enough for my pegs before adding glue to install them.

To install the pegs, I just squirted a little wood glue into each hole and added my peg.

The wood glue seeps out a bit, so I had a few shop rags to wipe the excess away. I always keep socks and shirts with holes in them for shop rags.

Since I knew I would stain this piece, I didn’t want any wood glue residue leftover, so I sprayed each area with soap and water and wiped it dry with a clean cloth. If I was painting this piece, I could omit this step.

Once all pegs were installed, I flipped the board upside down to let the glue dry for a few hours, then I stained the whole thing Minwax Special Walnut to match the rest of the pieces in my coffee bar.

To install my peg rack, I marked the studs in my wall with a stud finder. I like to use painters tape to mark studs, since it is easily removable.

Then I used 2” screws to attach the peg rack to the studs.

All done!