I happened to stumble upon the perfect solution over at Amy's Casablanca. It was exactly what I was envisioning
Courtesy of Amy's Casablanca
So, I hopped into my car and headed to Home Depot to buy several fence pickets. Now, I learned the hard way, fence pickets are a "seasonal item", so they didn't become available at my local Home Depot until the first of April. The pickets were only 3" wide, but they were 6 feet long. It's helpful to know the dimensions of your guitar, which I did (I'm surprised I remembered to do this step, actually) before you go to purchase your pickets. I knew the length would be more than adequate, but where the pickets were so narrow, I knew I would need several, so I bought six of them, to ensure enough width for the guitar and then a little extra on each side of the guitar. One picket was for the back...to hold all the pickets together (more on that later). The pickets were not in great shape. We had to look each picket over really well, as many of them have a lot of imperfections. The pickets cost all of $1.68/a piece. While at Home Depot, I also purchased a small sample size of Glidden paint, to paint the pickets. The test size is perfect for small little projects like this. It cost all of $5. I opted to get a gray color called Dolphin.
Since I'm not comfortable using my husband's saw, I asked him to take over and cut the pickets down to size. He began by lining them all up and cutting off an inch or so on the bottoms, just to give them a straight, perfect edge. He then cut off the tops.
The dimensions we ended up with were 17 inches wide by 42 inches long. As you can see from the above photo, we used five pickets across, We took the sixth picket, cut the top of the picket off, and then cut that piece into three smaller pieces. The length of each piece was just shy of the total width of the five picket, roughly 15 inches long. To get the pickets to adhere, my hubby placed the three pieces horizontally across the back: one near the top, middle and bottom, as such:
Our horizontal planks weren't aligned perfectly, but that was my fault, as I thought my hubby had initially made the planks too long in proportion to the guitar so he just cut off one end to give me the desired length I wanted. Otherwise, they would have been perfectly aligned...OOPS! Thankfully, you can't see this!
Hubby then used his key-hole router bit, and routed an area on the top horizontal piece to allow for us to hang it on the wall. Two nail heads fit perfectly in the key-hole opening!
The next step was to paint it. I wanted a rustic look and feel, so I didn't sand the planks much. And, when I painted, I only put on one coat, as I didn't want full coverage.
The next step was to adhere the guitar hanger. This little hanger was very inexpensive. I think I paid $4-5 on Amazon.
It came with screws, so we laid the guitar on the planks and positioned the hanger where we thought we wanted it to be placed. My hubby then screwed the hanger to the fence pickets, and we placed it on the wall with two nails, which again fit right into the key-holes hubby had routered. Here's the end result!
And another shot
Here's a side view
A really simple project, all for less than $22! I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out and my son loves it. What more could I ask for!
