We had built a wall tree for our previous house, but in the new house it seemed to engulf the wall and my wife no longer liked the way it looked in this space. We almost resolved to throw it out or break it down and recycle the wood, but before we went that far I suggested we try redesigning it. I essentially took the old piece and cut it in half with a circular saw.
The original piece was stained right after it was built – I just never took any pictures unfortunately. The new design did a lot less to swallow up the space it occupied. We also added an embellishment to the coat hook part. We took all the leftover name place holder logs from our wedding and glued them above the hooks. I secured that sucker to two different studs using trusty cabinet screws. We use this thing all the time to hang our coats and the lower part for shoes when we come in the house and also to hold dog leashes for walks =).
