Quick DIY Project – Bathroom Towel/Decor Ladder

Oh my goodness! I have made several blanket ladders for my home and for gifts for friends and family. I don’t know why I didn’t think about using one in our bathroom for bath towels and decor. Since I was about to refresh our master bathroom on a small budget, I decided that I would create as much of my decor as possible.

I had a few good boards laying around the house. I decided to use a 4′ oak board that I had in my garage that I purchased several months back for about $8.00. I usually will draw out the basic design on grid paper and decide how big my final project will be based on the space it is going in.

At the back of our bathtub, there is a significant size ledge. Since purchasing the antique mirror inspired my bathroom refresh, and the ladder would be on the same wall, I decided that the ladder needed to have a good amount of height to it as well.

I ripped the oak board into two 2″ boards for the rails (48″ long) and then a 1.25″ width piece for the rungs. The last piece wasn’t needed, but I am sure will be utilized for some other great DIY in the future. After all, it is oak and a good (but thin) piece of wood.

I just laid out my rails to the angle I hoped to obtain and then marked the piece of wood that would be the rung with the angle. The angle I utilized ended up being about a 9-degree angle.

I really like the tone and shade of the Varathane PROVINCIAL stain. You will find that many of my DIY projects are made with this particular one. The good thing about that is one quart will last for quite some time and make several projects.

I used my brad nail gun and wood glue to attach the rungs at first. Then I came back in with my drill bit and pre-drilled and added wood screws to securely attach all the rungs one last time.

This was the bathroom before I started to scrape and sand the heavy trowel off the walls. I had done this heavy trowel about 12 years ago and had decided that it was time to go. We had a few bids on smoothing out the walls, but since they were higher than we wanted to spend, I just got busy and tackled it. The walls ended up with a parchment paper feel instead of the heavy trowel. I do like them much better and I really liked that I saved $1,000 by not hiring a contractor to get them completely smooth.

My goal was to make a few decor items so that I could do part one of the bathroom refresh for under $200. I did make 3 easy projects. One was this bathroom decor ladder that I made for under $10. The second was a bathtub tray that I made for about $10. The third was a wall hook rack that I made for under $10. I think that making 3 of my items and only spending around $30 for those items really made my bathroom refresh happen on a super small budget. I would say that is a win-win.

Here are a few other items I purchased to layer in to give the bathroom more personality: