How to make a DIY dog wardrobe

Anyone who knows me knows that I am best friends and absolutely obsessed with my dog, Sugar. Only slightly more than I’m obsessed with DIYs.

I spoil her probably a little too much, and one of the ways I spoil her is with clothes. I know everyone says this, but I swear to god she actually loves to dress up. She got it from her mama.

But to be honest, her little collection of clothes is getting kinda outta control. Just shoving them under my bed isn’t gonna cut it anymore.

It’s time for her to graduate to her big girl’s closet. Well… mini makeshift big girl’s closet at least. Okay fine, it’s a clothing rack.

I knew I wanted to make a closet for her but no idea how I wanted to make that happen, so I went to Home Depot and waited for inspiration to strike. There was a lot of trial and error, but I fucked a couple of things up so that you don’t have to. This is how you make a DIY dog wardrobe.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 20ft total PVC pipes (1/2 inch)
• 8 – 1/2″ PVC corner fittings
• 8 – 1/2″ PVC coupling fittings
• 2 – 1/2″ PVC T fittings
• measuring tape
• hot glue gun
• heavy duty hot glue sticks
• hack saw
• E6000 glue
• 1.5″ wooden sphereshttps://amzn.to/3iscZc3
• spray paint

Step one: make your measurements (with a little moral support)

Sugar had to double check that I was making the correct measurements so I didn’t fuck up her DIY dog wardrobe.

To make sure the hangers aren’t sticking out and the clothes aren’t hanging on the floor, measure the hangers you’re planning on using from side to side and the longest clothing item hanging on a hanger from top to bottom. Add a couple of inches to each of those lengths, and there are your dimensions.

For example, my hangers are a little less than 12″ across and the biggest clothing item is 22″ long, so I made my dimensions 14″x14″ for the base and 24″ tall. For the bar that will hold the clothes, it’s at the halfway point (7″).

Here’s what my (very rough) sketch looked like.

Step two: cut your pieces

Using your measurements, you will need 4 pieces that are height-length and 7 pieces that are width-length. The next part you need to eyeball a little bit — 4 pieces that are roughly half the length of your width.

As you can see below, this is where the bar the clothing hangs on will fit in.

Since the connector bit doesn’t allow the two halves to touch fully, these pieces aren’t fully half of the 14″ bar, so you have to try to figure out the length of the negative space. I eyeballed the space around 3/4″ long, so I subtracted that from the 14″ length and divided that by two, and that’s the length the 4 pieces need to be.

That was all super confusing to explain (and the source of the “fucking up” part I was talking about before), so here’s a visual that hopefully helps.

Or, just go with the exact same dimensions as me so you don’t even have to worry about doing the math.

Tips for cutting with the hacksaw: hold it steady as you can and do slow, firm cuts. Another fuck up of mine — I did not do this and ended up with a ton of crooked ends on my tubes that I had to sand down — end result: slightly different lengths and a slightly wobbly rack.

Step three: assemble the individual components

This is super simple. All you gotta do is make your base and top of the rack. Use your corner pieces as the corners (duh), and use your “T” pieces to insert the bar across the top piece.

Stick the coupling pieces on both ends of all of your height-length pieces.

To make the structure a little more solid, squeeze some E6000 on the inner walls of the connector pieces so that the tubes won’t wobble and fall out.

Step four: glue that shit together for an assembled DIY dog wardrobe

So this part would have been easier if I could find connector pieces that look like this instead of my regular corner pieces.

If they have them at your local hardware store, pick them up and you basically are just snapping everything into place and you’re done. All you gotta do is spray paint

If your store doesn’t have them, like mine, then keep following along.

Because hot glue solidifies faster than E6000, you’re going to use heavy-duty hot glue to connect the height pieces to the base and top. Attach all pieces to the base before you move onto attaching the top piece (don’t try to do it all at once — trust me, it won’t work)

Nestle the side pieces into the corners of the base, slathering a generous amount of hot glue to fill the are pocket between the two pieces. After there seems to be enough hot glue to help it stay upright, squeeze some E6000 to strengthen the bond further.

note: put enough glue to make it solid, but don’t go overboard to where you have a ton of visible glue leaking out. A little bit is inevitable, but try to minimize it.

Step five: polishing up the structure

Because there is an exposed vessel at the top, I wanted to cute it up a little bit. I found these little wooden balls at JoAnn Fabrics that fit perfectly, but feel free to substitute any other items that fit your style. (Some decorative knobs could be cute)

All you gotta do is slap some E6000 on the bottom of the balls and stick them to the open end of the tube.

Step six: paint it and you’re done!

Grab your spray paint in the color and finish of your choice. I chose matte black to make it versatile, but feel free to go crazy with it if you wanna make it bolder.

You’ll probably need to do a few coats to get it fully covered. Make sure you get it from every angle and do slow, steady strokes to avoid drips showing up.

Wait 24 hours to hang anything on it, because you don’t wanna ruin the clothes in case of any wet spots.

Hang the clothes up. And boom. Your dog is now the most stylish, boujee-est dog on the block with their DIY dog wardrobe.

Now go spoil your dogs and revel in being a crazy dog mom, and
keep it homey, homies

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