Transforming an entryway or carport into a welcoming, organized, and functional space can dramatically enhance your home’s appeal and daily convenience. My recent carport and entry makeover was primarily motivated by the constant clutter of shoes and boots accumulating near the doors. To combat this common household challenge, I embarked on a DIY journey, starting with a clever Shoe and Boot Storage Ladder for the front entrance. For the back door, I envisioned and built a custom bench complete with a built-in boot rack tucked neatly underneath. This dual-purpose furniture piece not only provides a comfortable spot to sit while removing footwear but also offers dedicated, organized storage for those muddy boots and everyday shoes, keeping your home tidy and stylish. This project was proudly sponsored by Danner Boots, whose durable craftsmanship aligns perfectly with the robust functionality of this DIY solution.
Beyond just shoes, entryways often become a dumping ground for various items. To further streamline my space, I relocated the existing coat rack from my kitchen wall to a more appropriate spot directly above the newly built bench. This strategic move makes the entry an ideal location for wet jackets, umbrellas, hats, dog leashes, and any other miscellaneous items that previously contributed to kitchen clutter. The goal was to create a designated zone where everything has its place, ensuring a smooth transition into and out of the house.
Danner Boots: Inspired by Quality and Durability
The inspiration for efficient and durable storage often stems from the items we wish to store. In my case, it was the exceptional quality of Danner boots. I’ve been consistently wearing their Stronghold boots, which directly inspired the Shoe Ladder project. Danner also provided me with their Bull Run boots – an incredibly handsome pair that, while requiring a bit of breaking in, rewards you with unmatched comfort and style. These boots are proudly made in the USA with a commitment to quality components. Crafted from durable, full-grain leather, they feature a classic moc-toe design that exudes timeless appeal. Perhaps my favorite practical feature is their oil-and-slip-resistant sole, making them perfect for tackling various outdoor conditions and reinforcing the need for equally robust storage solutions. The reliability and rugged elegance of Danner boots truly underscore the value of creating a storage system that protects and showcases such quality footwear.
Building a Custom Bench with an Integrated Boot Rack
A custom bench offers unparalleled flexibility, allowing you to tailor its dimensions precisely to your available space. For my entryway, I designed a bench approximately 17 inches deep, 19.5 inches high, and 48 inches wide. This specific size comfortably accommodates my needs and seamlessly integrates into the carport area. Beneath the sturdy benchtop, the ingeniously designed boot rack provides organized storage for up to five pairs of shoes or boots, keeping them elevated and aired out. This section will guide you through the process of constructing this practical and stylish piece of furniture, highlighting techniques for creating wide planks, precise cuts, and a durable finish.
Mastering Wide Wood Planks: Joining Boards for Your Benchtop
Achieving a significant depth of 17 inches for a benchtop using a single piece of lumber can be challenging and costly. Specialized wide planks like a “2×18” are often expensive or simply not readily available at standard lumberyards. A more economical and equally robust solution is to create your own wide plank by laminating several narrower boards together. For this bench, I successfully joined one 2×10 and one 2×8 piece of lumber, which combined to yield the desired approximate 17-inch width. This technique allows for greater control over material selection and can often result in a more unique and visually appealing grain pattern.
When selecting lumber, don’t shy away from “flawed” construction-grade pieces; often, their unique characteristics add personality and rustic charm to the finished project. Despite needing a 48-inch long bench, I opted for 8-foot pieces of lumber. This extra length provided ample opportunity to “play around” with grain matching, allowing me to find the most aesthetically pleasing configuration where the two planks would join. Once I settled on a grain pattern I liked, I marked each end of the joint with matching symbols. These symbols straddled the joint, with half on each piece of wood. This simple yet effective method ensures that I could easily re-align the corresponding pieces after they had been jointed, planed, and dadoed (or mortised in my case). This labeling technique is especially useful when working with multiple pieces simultaneously, ensuring precision and preventing mix-ups.
To ensure a flawless joint, I meticulously jointed the mating edges of the selected planks. This step creates perfectly flat and square surfaces, crucial for a strong, gap-free glue joint. Utilizing my Festool Domino joiner, I then cut precise mortises into each piece. The Domino creates a strong, hidden connection that significantly increases the strength and alignment of the glued joint, ensuring a durable and flat benchtop.
With the mortises prepared, I applied a generous amount of wood glue to both edges of the boards and to the floating tenons. These tenons were then inserted into the mortises of one piece of wood. Carefully, I aligned the mortises on the opposing piece and slid it into place over the tenons. Contrary to popular belief, excessive clamping pressure is not necessary; simply apply enough force to firmly draw the two sides together, allowing the glue to distribute evenly and create a strong bond.
It’s important to note that wood glue, when properly applied, forms an incredibly strong bond that can often exceed the strength of the wood itself. Fasteners are generally not required to join wood planks in this manner; the mortises and tenons primarily serve to keep the faces perfectly aligned during the glue’s curing process, preventing slippage and ensuring a flat surface. For this project, I created two such wide planks: one destined to become the robust benchtop, and the other to be cut down into the sturdy legs.
For those without specialized tools like a Festool Domino, dowels offer an excellent alternative for ensuring proper face alignment during clamping. Dowels are inexpensive, easy to use, and you’ll already have them on hand for the boot rack itself, making them a convenient option for maintaining even surfaces under clamping pressure.
Once the glue has partially dried, typically within 30-60 minutes depending on temperature and humidity, any excess can be easily scraped off. This “leather-hard” stage is ideal for removal, as the glue is firm enough not to smear but soft enough to yield to a scraper. While fully dried glue requires a bit more effort, a sharp scraper makes quick work of it, leaving a clean surface without damaging the wood.
Crafting the Benchtop: Sanding for Smoothness and Comfort
After the glue had fully cured and all excess had been meticulously scraped away, the focus shifted to refining the benchtop. I began the sanding process with 120-grit sandpaper to remove any minor imperfections and residual glue, then progressed to 180-grit for a smoother finish. For a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing benchtop, it’s essential to round and soften all the edges and corners. This not only enhances the user experience but also gives the bench a more finished and inviting look. Taking your time during this sanding phase will significantly impact the final feel and appearance of your project.
Precisely Cutting the Bench Legs
The second wide plank, created through the same lamination process, was designated for the bench legs. First, I sanded this large piece smooth and carefully rounded the edges that would form the front and back of the legs. This pre-sanding and rounding ensures consistency and a refined look for the vertical supports. Then, utilizing my track saw for ultimate precision, I cut two identical 17-inch long legs. A track saw is ideal for making perfectly straight and square cuts on wide panels, ensuring the bench stands stable and true. If you don’t have a track saw, a circular saw with a straight edge guide can achieve similar results with careful execution.
Constructing the Functional Boot Rack
The heart of this organizational bench is its innovative boot rack, which is surprisingly simple to construct. It starts with a standard 2×4 piece of lumber. Into this 2×4, holes are drilled at 4-inch intervals, precisely spaced to accommodate various boot and shoe sizes. The diameter of these holes will depend directly on the size of the dowels you source; mine measured 7/8 inches in diameter. If you’re using a hand drill, maintaining a steady hand and focusing on keeping the drill perfectly straight for each hole is crucial for a neat and effective rack. A drill press, however, offers superior accuracy and consistency for this step.
For the dowels themselves, I cut them to a length of 9 inches. This measurement ensures that once they are securely glued into the 2×4, approximately 8 inches of usable length remains for holding boots. (If you drill completely through the 2×4, you’ll have about 7.5 inches of usable length.) A clever time-saving tip for cutting multiple dowels to the exact same length is to set up a stop block on your miter saw. This eliminates the need to measure each individual dowel, speeding up the process and ensuring uniformity.
To simplify the staining process, I applied stain to the 2×4 boot rack piece before inserting the dowels. This allows for easier application and wiping of the stain, ensuring complete coverage without obstruction. Once the stain on the 2×4 was dry, I then glued in the dowels, followed by staining them to match the rest of the boot rack. This sequential staining method ensures a consistent finish across all components of the rack.
Staining & Finishing: Protecting Your Woodwork with Style
For the finishing touches, I opted for a rich golden oak, oil-based stain, which beautifully highlights the natural grain of the wood and complements the overall aesthetic of the entryway. Following the stain application, I sealed all the bench pieces with Liberon Finishing Oil. Liberon is a fantastic choice because it’s incredibly easy to achieve a stunning, durable finish. While technically an “interior” wood finish, it boasts excellent resistance to water, alcohol, food acids, and heat. My carport, though not a fully enclosed interior space, is entirely covered, ensuring the bench won’t be exposed to direct rain. This makes Liberon oil a perfectly suitable and highly protective choice for this covered outdoor application, offering both beauty and resilience. Applying multiple thin coats, allowing adequate drying time between each, will build up the most durable and beautiful finish.
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stain only -
one coat of Liberon oil
Assembling Your DIY Boot Storage Bench
The assembly phase brings all the carefully crafted components together. I utilized loose tenons to join all the bench parts, ensuring robust and aesthetically pleasing connections. The boot holder is positioned precisely 4 inches down from the top of the legs. Before applying any glue, it’s absolutely critical to cut all the mortises and conduct a “dry fit” of the entire bench. This step allows you to identify and correct any fitment issues or alignment problems without the pressure of setting glue, ensuring a smooth final assembly.
While loose tenons offer superior strength and a clean appearance, a simpler approach for attaching the boot holder, especially for those new to woodworking, would be to use pocket screws after the legs have been securely fastened to the benchtop. This method is faster and requires fewer specialized tools, while still providing a strong joint.
For my tenon-based assembly, we first secured one leg to the benchtop. Then, we carefully held the 2×4 boot holder in its precise position while “rocking” the second leg into place, aligning all the tenons and mortises simultaneously. Once everything was properly seated, we applied clamps, ensuring that the legs remained perfectly square to the benchtop as the glue cured. Maintaining squareness during this critical curing phase is paramount for a stable and aesthetically pleasing finished bench.
After the glue had fully cured and the bench was structurally sound, we carefully moved it to its permanent home in the carport. There, we applied a couple more coats of the Liberon Finishing Oil to ensure maximum protection and a deep, lustrous finish. And just like that, the functional and beautiful boot storage bench was complete!
The beauty of this design lies in its incredible versatility for storing various types of footwear. You can hang shoes with their soles facing out, a method that works exceptionally well for sneakers and smaller shoes, similar to my earlier Easy Shoe Organization project. For boots, the dowel rack offers two excellent methods: standing them upright or hanging them inverted to drain and air dry. This truly is a multi-functional storage solution. 😉
With a few strategically placed colorful accessories, the shoes and boots stored on the rack almost disappear from view, blending seamlessly into the refreshed entryway aesthetic. This transformation is a dramatic improvement from the cluttered state it was in before the makeover. Removing all the unnecessary items that had accumulated here was the first step, and creating a space that now brings joy and pride every time I see it is what will truly prevent clutter from returning.
While some ongoing projects, like Julie’s house materials stacked against the stone wall (which always seems “two weeks away” from completion!), briefly occupy this space, the core functionality of the entryway is now vastly improved. This makeover may serve as a temporary mudroom solution until a planned house addition, which will include a dedicated space for our beloved cat, Maya, can be built. Balancing her comfort with our allergy concerns requires a careful redesign of the addition plans. Given how this year has progressed, this “temporary” solution might well become a longer-term one than initially anticipated. Regardless, the new boot bench and the clever shoe ladder have added immense functionality, making the carport/entryway not just organized, but truly beautiful and a source of daily happiness!
A huge thank you to Danner for generously sponsoring this project! Their commitment to quality footwear perfectly complements the durable and functional solutions we create for our homes. I encourage you to explore their full line of men’s and women’s footwear for your next adventure.
Stay tuned for more exciting projects! Things are truly starting to come together, and I’m eager to share the next steps in transforming our home and making it even more functional and beautiful.