Friday 16 May 2014

Our Simple DIY Clothes Airer

When we were designing our house one of the items on our lo-o-o-o-ong wishlist was 'somewhere to dry clothes indoors'. We live in a rainy and cold country, and we didn't want the added cost of a tumble dryer, nor did we want to have to fit in another appliance.

So we planned a fitted airer in the utility room, out of sight of the main kitchen.

And this is what I built:

Simple Clothes Airer - Our Handmade Home


This was 3 years ago when I wasn't keeping up with the blog particularly well, but it is one of the things I wished I had shared at the time... and I'm filling in some of those gaps now.

Anyway, I built a really simple fixed airer.

We call our airer 'the pulley' despite the fact that it is not a pulley. In Glasgow, tenements often have a large clothes airer in the kitchen or bathroom, on a pulley, and everyone refers to it as 'the pulley'. I'm a Glasgow girl, raised in a tenement house, so the name has stuck

I built it from lengths of pulley lath and off cuts from our skirting board architrave. Pulley lath is easy to find in independent hardware shops in Scottish towns and cities but we have never seen it in any of the big DIY chains. I have never been sure if it is a Scottish peculiarity. It is dowel in an elongated oval shape about 1cm wide x 4cm tall, very rounded on the top and bottom and comes in 2.4m lengths.

Our pulley is 1.9m long and takes a full load of washing comfortably.

The brackets on the wall are really simple: I used a spade drill bit to drill holes and a hacksaw to cut down into them. The holes are at 125mm centres.


The lengths sit in the brackets so we can take it apart easily to paint it.

The airer was installed at just the right height for the washing basket to fit on when it's empty. I hate that my washing baskets never seemed to have a home and just kicked about, it always seemed to be under my feet, and that's where the children and cat are supposed to be.

Simple Clothes Airer - Our Handmade Home

It's painted with white gloss paint because it is the only thing that will hold up to constant exposure to damp fabric. I'm thinking about changing the colour... I have recently fallen in love with a particular shade of yellow, but more of that another day.

Simple Clothes Airer - Our Handmade Home




2 comments :

  1. Thanks,

    It really is so simple, and beats having clothes horses strewn around the house.

    ReplyDelete

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