Easy DIY PVC Clothes Rack

I have been looking for a cheap but durable clothes rack for Michael's dance concert.  He will have 6 or 7 different costumes, so I figured it was time we brought our own rack to hang them on.  The only cheap ones I've come across have had terrible reviews for falling apart, so I decided to try to build one.  Ideally I would like one that rolls, but the boys' dressing room is down a flight of stairs, so I would end up needing to carry it and all the costumes down there anyway.

I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe.  To get the length, I measured across the back of our car so that I could use the top bar as a hanging rack while driving.  It was about 46", so I cut 2 pieces this length (the top and the bottom).  Then I wanted the height at 36", so I cut the 2 side pieces this length.  For the fittings I used elbows and tees.  I used the elbows to attach the top pole to the sides and tees to attach the bottom pole.  Finally to stabilize it, I attached another tee to each bottom corner using short 2" pipes and put a 5" pipe into each side of these tees.

elbow (left) and tee (right) fittings

top corner

bottom corner

top bar hanging in the car

hole with string to hang in the car

To make it usable as a rack that would hang in the car I drilled a hole through each end of the top pole and tied a string through it.  My plan is to carry the costumes in on that top pole and put the rack together once we get down to the dressing room.  I spent less than $10 on the PVC pipe and fittings, and it took me less than 30 minutes to complete.

Toy Story Halloween 2013

Wow, am I behind on blogging!  I'm just going to jump right in with some things I wanted to blog about and never did, so I am about 6 months behind.  Our church has started hosting a Trunk or Treat on Halloween evening.  We didn't participate the first year, but after being challenged by last year's (2012) big winner, I thought it would be fun to see what we could put together.  And I wasn't just in it for fun, I wanted to see if what kind of categories we could win in and figure out just how big our competition was.

I figured we couldn't go wrong with a Disney theme, and since I'm not really the princess type, I decided to go with Toy Story.  I couldn't quite get the whole family on board, but Luke and I were a team for this project.  Nick and Zack went with a Walking Dead theme and used the back of our truck.

I had found a fancy Buzz Lightyear costume at a resale store in his size for $5!  With some sewing help from my mom and some other resale store items, I dressed as Jessie.  We decorated the back of the car like Andy's room.  I painted white clouds on a plastic blue tablecloth to hang for the background.  I cut and painted a large piece of cardboard for the headboard and covered a folding table with a blue comforter for Andy's bed.  I decorated some cardboard boxes with sharpies to make the town, and I made a bean bag toss game out of soup cans with pictures of Potato Head and some homemade bean bags.

I made Buzz's spaceship for the kids to stand in and take pictures.  For the spaceship I used large pieces of cardboard leftover from Sam's Club (you can take these for free) and cut out the shapes for the front, sides, and wings (the front was about 4 feet tall).  I drew the design in pencil and painted it with craft paint.  I made a frame out of PVC pipe and fittings and duct taped the pieces on.  For a final touch I attached a string of lights across the top and sides.

It was such a fun evening!  After a rough start of not wanting to wear his costume, Luke came through for me as the cute factor.  He danced to the Toy Story songs I had playing through the car speakers and helped me hand out candy.  We even posed for pictures with several kids.

All of the kids and families voted on the cars, and we found out a couple of days later that we had won 4 out of 5 categories, including Best Overall!  We did not win for Scariest.  Our prize was a 6-pack of tickets to Holiday in the Park at 6 Flags, which we used over the Christmas holidays.