Once you've gathered more than a couple bottles of wine, you're going to need a wine rack to keep your bottles organized. If you buy more wine than you drink, like I tend to do, you'll need a big wine rack. But they can be expensive! Being a DIY guy, I decided I could build my own wine rack out of PVC.
This is what I started with: a metal wine rack (must have received as a gift), a broken wine fridge, and some bottles just sitting around. There were also 3-4 boxes of wine sitting on the basement floor. Not ideal.
[clear]So I went to Lowe's and bought some 3-inch and 4-inch PVC. This isn't your typical PVC used for plumbing – this stuff is thinner and (important) cheaper! Each 10-foot piece was about $10. It's meant for drainage, so you'll probably find it with lawn & garden stuff (I found it outside). One end is slightly larger (for fitting two pieces together) and sometimes there's a black liner in it. Finding this PVC was the most difficult part of the project, but I was persistent because I wanted to keep it cheap.
I needed 4 pieces of the PVC (2, 3-inch and 2, 4-inch) to make a 40-bottle rack. Remember: each 10-foot piece of PVC will hold 10 bottles.
Once I found the PVC, I had to chop it up, so I used a chop saw (if you don't have access to a chop saw, a hacksaw would work, too). My buddy and I marked 1 foot sections and brought the blade down, through the PVC. It was a mess, it wasn't exact, but it gave me what I needed.
When I got home, I had my kids help move the pieces to the basement so I could begin putting things together. My new PVC wine rack would be contained by a wall on one side, but nothing on the other so I moved my metal wine rack over, just to hold things in place as I set the pieces down on the counter top. Originally, I was going to put the 4″ pieces on the bottom, and 3″ pieces on top but I liked the random order that my kids created when they unloaded the van, so I went with that.
Once the pieces were in place, I used some PVC glue on the outside of the outermost pieces. This would keep the structure from moving, but there's no need to glue every piece together.
When it was all done, I was really happy I had bought some 4″ PVC as many bottles required the larger diameter pipe, or they were very snug in the 3″ pipe.
So there you have it: an easy, and cheap (I spent $40 for a 40-bottle rack, but already had the saw & glue), DIY PVC Wine Rack. Let me know if you try to build your own!
