Pegboards aren’t just for garages and craft rooms. This DIY Pegboard was designed to be a functional and interesting wall element in our guest-office room.
Sometime in mid-March I started working remotely due to the virus. I made a makeshift work area in our guest room that was perfectly fine for a temporary situation. Once the call was made to permanently close our office and begin working remotely for the foreseeable future I designed a space that made more sense.
You may recall that during our kitchen demo, we decided to close off our dining room to create a guest room [primarily for my father-in-law who comes to stay for extended periods of time]. While the guest room isn’t large, we were able to save space by building a Murphy bed. This left the opposite wall as a blank canvas for my now work-from-home office.
I created this design board in Canva [as I usually do], but something still was missing. I wanted a fun design element/wall feature. That’s when I came up with using DIY pegboards on either side of the TV/Monitors. They act as decor and a functional way to store office supplies.
Materials for DIY Pegboard
- 2 – 2 x 4 1/2″ Oak Plywood sheets
- 3 – 5/8″ wood dowels
- stain [color used Hazelwood]
- anchors/screws
- 2″ wood screws
- 2 1/2″ wood screws
- sandpaper
Tools for DIY Pegboard
- 5/8″ Fortsner Bit
- drill guide
- stud finder
- drill
- level
- tape measure
- table saw
- miter saw
- orbital sander
How to:
- Start by ripping down your plywood. (optional) Our board is 17″.
- Map out your holes using a T Square. Leave at least a 1/2″ border around your plywood. We measured 1″ in and marked every 3 inches.
- Pre-drill or punch holes where you will be drilling. Attach your fortsner bit. Using a drill guide is highly recommended so your holes are straight and dowels will fit snugly. [using 5/8″ bit and dowels]
- Place scrap wood under your plywood and drill your holes. The scrap wood will help your wood not split in the back.
- Sand. Using an orbital sander, lightly sand the front to remove pencil marks and the back to remove any rough edges around the holes. You can take a piece of sand paper rolled up to smooth out the inside of the holes being careful not to over-sand.
- Stain or paint your pegboard. I used Hazelwood stain to match the floating desk.
Install:
Holding your pegboard against the wall, make sure it’s level and then mark between two rows of holes for your braces. We used 3 braces total.
Locate studs if possible and secure your braces using 2″ wood screws. If no stud is available, use wall anchors.
Once all the braces are attached, pre-drill holes and secure the pegboard to the braces with 2 1/2″ wood screws.
Now that your pegboard is installed, you can measure for your dowels and shelves.
We had 7″ pieces of plywood leftover from when we ripped the boards, so that’s what we used for the shelves. The pegboards sat 1 1/4″ off the wall, so our dowels were cut at 8 1/4″.
I staggered the dowels to create different length shelves. Shelf lengths varied: 6 3/4″, 9 3/4″, 12 3/4″ [remember our 3″ hole placement].
Cut shorter length dowels to hold scissors, tape rolls, and other hanging decorative items.
