Why Am I Building A Blanket Ladder?

If your spouse is anything like mine I am sure you have a lot of “honey-do” items. One of those items that has been on my honey-do list is building a blanket ladder. This whole thing started when one of my wife’s work friends had an old wooden ladder in their home that they used to store their blankets on. This helped their space look less cluttered any more inviting. Well needless to stay my wife has wanted a lander blanket ladder in our home as well. One afternoon my wife was browsing an old antique store and she stumbled upon an older rustic ladder. She called to tell me she was going pick it up since I was taking to long to make the ladder I promised. I asked what they were wanting for it and she replied $75 dollars. I said no way and got the normal huff and puff. So after some time, I decided to finally build her ladder.

The Build

For the build of the blanket ladder, I decided to use plain old normal 2×4s. I took my time to find the three best looking 2×4’s that Home Depot had to offer. That took a little bit of time. Something I did a little different than other blanket ladders is I made the rungs out of octagons. This was my first attempt ever at cutting octagons on a table saw. It was actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I used this guide here on Instructables on how to do it.

Step 1: Material Needed and Cut List (3) 2x4's Needed

Required Supplies/Tools

❏Sand Paper

❏Stain/Finishing Supplies

❏Countersink Bit

❏Table Saw (only if you want Octagon Rungs)

❏Miter Saw

❏Tape Measure

❏Plug Cutter

Cut List

❏2 2x4’s cut @ 6’

❏6 2x4’s cut @ 23.5” (one extra rung piece is cut as

a practice piece for the octagons if it's your first time)

Step 2: Cutting Material

Cutting The Ladder Legs
For the ladder I created I made it 6' high. There is no reason why you can't make it taller or shorter. Just make sure to cut the necessary rungs needed for the added or shorter height.

Cutting The Rungs

Cutting the rung pieces I went with 23.5" to help minimize waste of material. Once again you can make this widith to whatever you decied looks good. One thing I have noticed about having this width farliy wide it gives the ability not having to fold the blanket a bunch of times over to make it fit.

Drilling For The Rungs

On rungs I made the spacing at 12" on center. This seemed to be the right amount of spacing to me. When drilling the holes into legs I used a counter sink bit to give me the ability to use plugs and hide the screws.

Step 3: Making the Octagons

Cutting The Octagons

Why did I choose to go the octagons inside of a square or maybe a round? Well, I thought it was something different and it gave me the opportunity to try something new. Please note my octagon leg lengths did not come out all 100 percent equal but very close.

Step 1: First take your 23.5" pieces and rip them into a square so they are 1.5" x 1.5"

Step 2: Now tilt your table saw over to 45 degrees. If you don't have a digital angle gauge you can use a sliding bevel square.

Step 3: Take your 1.5" square stock and lay it on the blade as shown in the provided pictures.

Step 4: With your square stock laying on the blade. Move your fence so it just touches the corner of the stock.

Step 5: Remove the stock from the blade and lay it flat on the table saw top and begin cutting and rotating it through the blade until you have created a octagon.

Step 4: Assembly

The Assembly

In the end of octagons, I drilled a small pilot hole to help align the rungs.

For assembly, I applied a liberal amount of glue on the ends of the octagons.
Then began to add a screw so it was just poking through and lined that up with the hole in the end of the octagon pieces.
Maintain the 12" on center of your rungs throughout assembly
This worked well on one side, on the opposite end I cut a spacer block to make sure everything was staying aligned properly

Step 5: Sanding and Finshing

Sanding and Finishing

I started off by taking some 120 grit and going over everything.
Then I took my block plane and put a little round over on the edges of the ladder to help break that sharp edge.
Then I came back with 220 and lightly sand it again.
Shot it with some compressed air
On to the finish, I applied Minwax Special Walnut to this piece. This has been a finish we have used for a lot of your furniture in our home and love the look of it. I only went with one coat because we both liked the results
Poly time. We used a semi-gloss very little coats and a light sand between coats with 320 to smooth it all out. Two coats were only needed for the results we were looking for.

I hope you enjoyed this guide on building your own blanket ladder. Feel free to check out my site for more and upcoming plans like this. Links in the Bio.