DIY Hat Stand

I’ve been looking for cute accessories for the closet I’m redoing. While at the antique shop, I saw lots of hat display stands. But they range from $30 to $125. I bought one, but after looking at it, I thought that I could easily make one with thrifted items. Here’s a tutorial for how to make a DIY hat stand.

DIY hat stand

Let’s start with the video tutorial so you get an overview on what I did. Then, I’ll dive in with more details below:

If the video doesn’t work here, you can watch it on YouTube here. I’d be over the moon happy if you subscribed to my YouTube channel! Videos are actually released on YouTube first (usually the night before they’re published on the blog). Thank you!

SUPPLIES

The great thing about this project is that it’s easy to find items from the thrift shop to make this very inexpensively!

Tools

I bought the candle stick for $2 and the wood finial top was $1. I used paint and screws I had on hand so I spend a total of $3 on this project. Pretty affordable! Especially since I had just spent $30 on a vintage option.

step 1- prep the candlestick

Start by prepping the candlestick. The one I bought was super tall and the top was chipped.

To make it a more manageable size, I used a jigsaw to trim it down to 9 3/4″ tall.

step 2- connect the finial to the candlestick

Next, I needed to connect the finial to the candlestick. The finial is for holding up the hat. A wooden bowl would also work for this. I couldn’t find one thrifting, but I did find an old wood finial for the end of a drapery rod.

We ended up pulling the top off of the drapery finial. The bottom is hollow, so connecting it through that would have been tricky.

To attach the two pieces together, we used the original nail that was holding the finial together. There was already a hole in the top of the candlestick so it was very easy to connect the two pieces together.

It was pretty quick to use a hammer on the original nail.

If a wooden bowl were to be used instead of a finial, using a screw to connect the two pieces would be a great solution too. I figure a wooden bowl at a thrift shop would be easier to find so I wanted to include instructions on that too.

Finally, the last step of construction is to set the nail. That lowers the head of the nail lower than the top of the finial so that it is more secure.

step 3- finish work

Since the nail left a hole in the top of the finial, I need to fill it with some wood filler. I put on two coats of the wood filler to get a flush finish.

Once the wood filler was dry, I sanded it until it was smooth.

And now, all that’s left to do is to paint! I kind of liked the blue base on the candlestick, but I needed the top and bottom to match.

So I painted the whole thing Beloved Pink by Behr. I just used a paint brush and did a few thin coats of paint in order to not get drips on the DIY hat stand.

after

I thought I’d share how it turned out! I set up the new DIY hat stand with the vintage one I bought.

Isn’t this such a fun way to display hats?! We’re building a new main bedroom closet and I’ve designed in some space for hats and bags. I can’t wait to put these in their new homes!