Hey Ya’ll,

We have a super quick and inexpensive DIY to add some charm to your living space with a blanket ladder. We have seen several variations of these blanket ladders and felt that we needed one in our family room, but really didn’t want to spend the money for a sturdy ladder. So, naturally I put my husband to the task of what I had envisioned and he whipped it up in no time!

This blanket ladder can be made in less than 30 minutes and will improve any space for less than 25$ (if you have the required tools that is).

Here is a list of the tools and materials we used to create our blanket ladder:

Materials: 

• (4) 2x4x8 untreated pine
• Wood screws (2 ½”)
• Desired wood stain or paint
• Circular or Miter Saw
• Drill
• Pocket Hole jig (if desired)

First step is a trip to your local lumber yard or big box store (whichever has the lowest prices for lumber right now) and select (4) 2x4x8’s that are relatively straight and not bowed-this might involve being a little picky at your local big box store.  If necessary grab a box of wood screws and either a can of stain or paint. We used Minwax Wood Finish Stain in the color Early American for our project.

After gathering up all of the materials it is time to kick off the quick and easy project.  

Before making any cuts determine how tall you would like your ladder to be when leaning against the wall.  If necessary it is ok to keep the legs of the ladder a little longer and cut off as you see fit.  We cut our ladder legs to a height of 6 feet to ensure an even length in between the ladder rungs.  Once our legs were cut we took the measurement of the legs and determined the distance we wanted from the top and bottom for our rungs.  We started our rungs at an equal distance of 5 inches from both the top and bottom of the ladder.  After that we measured the distance between those two rungs and determined an equal distance and number of rungs that would be appealing to the eyes. We cut each rung to a width of 16 inches.

Once we had all of our legs and rungs cut we started assembling the project.

Take one of the legs and your first rung and determine the angle of the rung that you like best-this is all on personal preference and the angle should be followed for all rungs of the ladder. 

**Since using pine boards it is preferable to pre-drill the holes for the screws to avoid splitting the boards**

Screw in your first rung using two wood screws at the desired angle and then continue with the rest of the rungs on that side. Once complete, place the other leg on top of the rungs and complete the other side.  After it being put together, take the ladder to where it is being placed in your home and lean it against the wall to determine the angle that the feet need to be cut to.  This is important to keep the ladder from sliding if placed on a surface such as hardwoods or tile.  Cut the feet to the angle that best keeps it from sliding.  This really takes some trial and error, making minor, equal measurement cuts on the feet until you feel it works best.  After this you have a completed ladder and the fun/stress relieving part commences.

Take a hammer, screwdriver or any other hard object and go to town putting dents and scratches into the ladder to give it some “character” which will show up great once it is stained.  We took turns letting out some quarantine aggression until we saw fit!

After taking an aggression break it was time to stain the ladder.  We used Minwax Wood Finish Stain in the color Early American and wiped on the stain one coat at a time until we liked the color when it was dry (about 3 coats).  

All in all this project took us about 30 minutes and we had a lot of fun! It adds the perfect color and feature to our bare wall as well as displays some of our nicer throws! We were super happy with the end results!

Carly & John

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