Is a pot rack too weird of a thing to love? I really do love them. First of all, storing pots and pans in a cabinet is really annoying, and they all bang around when you try to get out the second-to-biggest one out. (Hey, sometimes really stupid things really get on my nerves.) I’ve always dreamed of the day when I could “fetch a pitcher (pot)” just like Wesley does for Buttercup in the best movie of all time.

I had the perfect spot to hang one- right on this gnarly brick chimney that I had painstakingly uncovered from underneath a bunch of plaster.

My dreams were about to come true when I spotted this beauty from Ikea for $15:

However, the thing is 31.5″ wide, and my brick chimney is only 30″ wide. I spent a lot of time holding the rack up to it anyway, trying to see if a genius plan would pop into my brain. I even considered taking a hacksaw to the metal rods, and I would have done it, but the threaded nuts are stuck into the ends of the rods, so I would have cut those off. Stan said that we could still hacksaw it and just epoxy in new nuts, but with my to-do list already a gazillion miles long I just didn’t see it actually happening.

Then I got a brilliant plan. A somewhat pricey plan, but one that would work.

See, Ikea also sells these single rails at a much more acceptable length of 20″.

And they have the exact same threaded nuts in the ends. So all I had to do was buy 6 of them! This is where the pricey part comes in. At $7 a pop I spent a total of $42 on these, plus $15 for the original, bringing the total to $57. That’s actually still a pretty good price for one of these babies compared to what I’ve seen elsewhere, but alas more than the $15 I thought I was originally going to get away with. Oh well. (I will still be able to use the six 31.5″ rods with the six pairs of single brackets elsewhere.)

I assembled the shelf, then Stan the man used his fancy masonry screws to bolt that sucker to the wall. Then we hung the pots.

Woo hoo! Someday I will have gorgeous heavy copper bottom stainless steel pots, but for now these remnants from roommates past will have to do. And yes, the range hood is still serving as a coffee table in the guest bedroom, and may still for a while now… there are too many other things to do that require good weather, and I think that will take an entire afternoon.

Stay tuned to see what we did with that ugly hole!

Update: I fixed the ugly hole!