Organizing a bathroom, no matter how big or small, can be quite challenging sometimes. Considering the different ages and/or heights of your family member who would need to reach new toilet papers or even hang their towels – it can be a complicated task. Our solution to that? DIY towel holder using your old ladder.

Easy Shabby Chic Towel Holder

Let’s get to creating your own shabby chic towel holder, here are the materials you will need:

1. Old wooden ladder
2. Screws
3. Cordless drill 
4. Rag
5. Stain or paint

How to transform your old ladder into a shabby chic towel holder:

1. Sand your wood if you feel that there are rough parts on your ladder. This will also eliminate any splinters.
2. Clean your old wooden ladder with a rag.
3. You may repaint the ladder with the color of your choice or stain it with brewed tea.
   1. You should have a strongly brewed tea if you opt to stain your wood
   2. Brush your brewed tea onto the ladder
   3. Let it dry.
   4. Once dry, decide if you want a second coating or not
   5. Apply a vinegar-steel wool solution (weathering solution)
      1. Pre-mix your weathering solution 24 hours before you apply it to the wood.
      2. Mix apple cider vinegar and a handful of super fine steel wool into a glass jar. The steel wool will dissolve in the vinegar but don’t expect the steel wool to dissolve completely.
4. See to it that it is completely dry before working on it again.
5. Mount your ladder to the wall. We highly suggest mounting the ladder into the wall to prevent accidents as well as save space.

Bonus Tip: Starting From Scratch

If in case you don’t have an old ladder to use but would love to have this in your bathroom, here’s a simple way to create your own ladder towel holder:

1. Find a pile of old wood or even new ones that can be made to look rustic.
2. Measurements would depend on the height and width you want. Consider as well the number of rungs that you need to create to make sure that every household member would benefit from your DIY shabby chic ladder towel holder. Half a foot or 12 inches can be a good spacing between the rungs.
3. Mark where you want to place the rungs.
4. Use wood glue to hold the rungs and secure them with screws at each connecting point to make them sturdy.
5. Stain your wood according to the outcome you want. Aside from the suggested process mentioned earlier, you can also follow these steps to stain your wood and know more about which type of sandpaper to use before staining your ladder towel holder.

Now that you have created your ladder towel holder, you may want to consider hanging baskets on the topmost rung to hold dry and neatly rolled towels or even place your choice of bathroom plant. We suggest putting a pot of English Ivy to help purify the bathroom.

Adding some hooks on the rung is also possible, especially if you have a large family who’d need to use your shabby chic towel holder.

This towel holder is also a great organizer for your pantry or kitchen area.