8 min read

Aluminum shoe rack

Table of Contents
An aluminum shoe rack filled with shoes.

Context

The building manager had been complaining about us leaving our shoes outside our front door in the front stairwell. We have a couple of shoe racks by our backdoor in our little “mud room” but nothing by our front door because there isn’t a lot of space to put one. We could have bought something from Ikea or Facebook Marketplace, but we had quite a specific idea of features we wanted, so it would have been hard to find something that met all the requirements and fit our space exactly.

Requirements

  1. Be shallow, so it doesn’t take up too much space in the corridor
  2. Prevent dirt and water from dripping onto shoes below
  3. Be able to store shoes of various sizes/heights
  4. Have a surface for keys/letters
  5. Single step operation to put shoes away (or we wouldn’t do it)
  6. Good airflow for drying wet shoes
  7. Able to easily vacuum under the rack
  8. Have each shelf be easy to clean

Design

After playing around in CAD for a few hours this is what I came up with:

Angled section view of the shoe rack in CAD
Angled full view of the shoe rack in CAD
Angled section and full views of the shoe rack in CAD

The shoes point up, soles toward the wall to accommodate boots which have a tall heel/shaft. At first, I was designing it the other way, but that would require a lot more vertical space between the shelves.

A picture of a boot positioned at an angle with an arrow marking the height of the toe box.
Toe box height of my boot
Screenshot of the section view of the shoe rack with the size of the gap between the shelves marked.
Measurement of the gap between shelves (3.726 inches)

This way the heels stick out which does eat into the corridor space more, but hopefully in a way that doesn’t feel too “in the way” and is more dynamic/flexible — only taking up exactly the extra space it needs rather than the whole rack being taller and deeper which would take up more space for every pair of footwear, even those that don’t need it.

Another important reason for shallowness is that the door to the small room is perpendicular to it and any amount that it extends past the door frame actively reduces the amount of space you have to walk through the door.

View of the completed shoe rack from the small room
View of the completed shoe rack from the small room

Originally I planned to make everything in plywood (applying methods similar to the desk shelf) but there weren’t large scrap pieces of plywood at the time and buying the material would have cost around $60. There were, however, large sheets of aluminum I could use (for free), and I was in my sheet metal phase, and I figured it would be easier to clean/be more durable especially with all the salt and wetness of winter, so I went with aluminum instead.

Large sheet of aluminum on a work bench.
Large sheet of aluminum I used to make the shoe rack

Build

Step 1 was to cut the pieces for each shelf using the sheet metal shear. Fortunately it was just large enough (width-wise) but pressing down on the foot pedal didn’t provide enough force to make the cut, so I used thick aluminum square stock as a cheater bar and that did the trick. Hopefully this wasn’t too bad for the machine… (or the square stock)

Sheet metal in the sheet metal shear
Using the full width of the shear
Top of sheet metal tissue box being filed as it is held in a vice
Using a cheater bar to get more leverage
Smaller rectangular pieces of sheet metal on a workbench
Cut shoe shelves and top shelf

Unfortunately, the sheet metal brake wasn’t wide enough to bend the entire width of the shelf to make the lip, so I used 2-inch (outer-diameter) angle iron and bolted it to each shelf instead. I used the shoes I was wearing to check what height I needed for the lip to stop the shoes from slipping off — it was higher than I expected because the heel kind of curves up.

Cutting the aluminum angle on the horizontal bandsaw
Cutting the aluminum angle on the horizontal bandsaw

Changing the material had changed a lot of the dimensions (since there isn’t the same thickness for each shelf) so I was kind of doing much of the measuring/putting together by vibe.

Dimensions and calculations written in pencil on rough paper.
Incomprehensible calculations

I spent a long time looking for these little angle brackets that would connect each shelf to the legs. I could have made them myself by cutting small aluminum angle and drilling the holes, but that would have taken a really long time, so I was relieved when I found just enough angle brackets of exactly the right size.

I used 8/32 pan head bolts and washers for all the through-hole connections and 6/32 pan head bolts to bolt the legs to the little angle brackets because one side of the brackets were already threaded. This was super helpful because otherwise I would have had to worry about there being enough space to fit two nuts on the inside of the bracket.

Angle brackets that connect the lip of each shelf to the front legs
Angle brackets that connect the lip of each shelf to the front legs
Drawers of 8/32 and 6/32 nuts, washers and pan-head bolts
8/32 and 6/32 nuts, washers and pan-head bolts

Another thing I realized I needed to consider midway through is how the baseboard sticks out from the wall. To accommodate this, I offset the back legs from the back of the shelves so that the rack could be flush against the wall and I wouldn’t need to make any special cuts at the bottom of the back legs. I used flat bar as the back legs since they wouldn’t be able to wrap around the back of the shelves.

View from the bottom left of the partially assembled shoe rack on the workbench
View from the left of the partially assembled shoe rack on the workbench
Assembling the shoe shelves and legs
View from the front right of the fully assembled shoe rack, freestanding on the floor
View from the back left of the fully assembled shoe rack, freestanding on the floor
Fully assembled and freestanding (now with the top shelf!)

When I was building it I was unsure of how rigid the whole rack would be but after tightening all the bolts it did end up being pretty rigid/stable. The only part that could have been made more rigid is the top shelf. Because it doesn’t have the angle iron bolted to it like the shoe shelves, it is kind of flexible in the middle, so you can’t put heavy things at the center. I could always add angle iron to the top shelf, at the back, either pointing up like a backsplash or pointing down to be more out of sight, but at this point I think I was ready to be done with the piece.

Installation

Cycling it home in my bike trailer was kind of an adventure. I had used lock washers and normal washers at random and a couple of the connections that used normal washers came loose on the ride back. Fortunately, enough of the nuts and bolts fell directly into the trailer that I was able to have the rack stable enough to start using when I got home. I will definitely be using all lock washers (and maybe even loctite) going forward.

View of the shoe rack in the bike trailer from the right side of the bike
Loading up the shoe rack into the bike trailer

A final addition was corner protectors (we call these specific ones bear-butts) to the front two corners of the top shelf. I had left them exposed and they might catch on people’s clothes as they walk past or poke someone’s eye out when they reach down to get their shoes from the lower shelf.

Pin Xiu applying the corner protectors to the front corners
Pin Xiu applying the bear-butts to the front corners
Front view of the shoe rack with our shoes on them
Front view of the shoe rack with our shoes on them

Everyone was really happy with the new shoe rack. It fit the space perfectly and satisfied all of our requirements. A couple of months later, it has gotten a little more cluttered and dirty but is still working well for us.

Piece of cut sheet metal with paper template stuck on the front
The shoe rack 5 months later in its natural state