Entry Coat Hooks {'cause I don't have enough to do right now}

Winter with 3 kids means 15 jackets, several backpacks, 20 pairs of shoes, several shopping bags, etc...all coming into the front door and STOPPING.  Just walk in and dump, right there, in the entry.
 Sound familiar?
 In our house there seems to be this fashion rule that you must
 never wear the same sweater/jacket twice in one day.

Now, don't be mistaken, I am not THAT disorganized.  I have a closet 2 feet from the front door with baskets for every one's shoes...and a coat rack 3 feet from the front door with 8 hooks (high and low) for coats and bags.  The shoe baskets look like this:

But that's another project for another month.

And the coat rack always seems to be overtaken by "permanent" residents (including dog leashes, hats, camelbacks, and a handful of coats).

I have been looking at hundreds of pics on line of gorgeous and practical entries...houses with incredible mudrooms...moms more organized than Martha.  I've been dreaming of my entry bench with hooks above.

Love the beadboard and all the cubbies (think shoes!)

The is about as close to perfect as I can think of!

Then again, this one is pretty darn perfect, too.

This one is Just A Girl's...she dreamed it, her husband built it.

All pics above from Just a Girl.

 I could go on dreaming all day about *my* entry bench. 

Anyways, we're planning to board and batten "soon" eventually...so I've been hesitant to do anything on the entry walls.......up until NOW!  11 Days before Christmas...with a TO DO list longer than Santa's...I decided it would be a good time to pop something up on the wall to hold *more* coats and backpacks. 

 I'll just put up a few hooks, it'll take 15 minutes.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

So this project started out with 2 Pottery Barn hook boards I've been storing in the garage for 9 years (ever since I worked there).  They are these dark wood boards with 3 hooks on each....too wide to fit both boards on the wall I have available.  I figured I'd take the hooks off and just screw them right into the wall.  Five hooks would fit across my space nicely.  So I gathered my materials and am ready to hang. 
Then I realized I only have 3 studs available and they are in awkward spots...I'm not getting 5 hooks up like that.  DARN. 
OK  Plan B.

I rummaged through the garage and found the perfect piece of trim left over from the last window trim/baseboard project. It needed a little trimming, so out came the skill saw.  (This might take me a little longer than 15 minutes). Measured twice, cut once, PERFECT, yay!  It fits.  I'll nail that into the 3 studs and then the hooks into that.

Up goes the board.  I nailed the first nail with a hammer and bent it about 15 times until the nail was all crooked and the board was not too happy with me.  So out came the nail gun...for 6 nails! 
(Did I mention this was supposed to take 15 minutes?)

 

I filled the small holes and threw on a coat of white paint (Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace- the trim around all our windows and doors)

I have these two Pottery Barn boards with 3 hooks in each that have been sitting in the garage for 2 years and just popped the hooks off and there were my hooks.  I did a little math to space them evenly, used a level to make all my marks for the screws and pre-drilled the holes.  Viola!  A quick temporary solution to our entry clutter.

Now I need to move that key rack up a bit....and put in some baseboards!

And when the board and batten goes up and my cute entry bench, cubbies and hooks are installed, we'll just take this down.  But in the meantime for the next year, this will do just fine!

Ok, back to that TO DO Christmas list!