Josh, a friend of mine, sent me a message saying that he needed to have his terracotta roof redone, and he wanted to know if I could use some salvaged tiles to build a wine rack.

Josh lives in an old house, built in the 20s-ish. It was built out of Milwaukee Cream City bricks and is roofed with red terracotta tiles, which until recently were from whenever the house was built. After bouncing some ideas around we settled on a general aesthetic theme: Make the piece evocative of the house. So from there I knew I needed to keep the wood light in color and to showcase the red of the tile.

I opted for red oak as a material and no stain. This keeps the wood color pretty light. The finish is a satin varnish. We opted for satin instead of gloss so as to not clash with the tile, and also I think it’s much more “Cream City brick” in character than a glossy polyurethane would be.

When I was thinking about how to design the piece, I kept coming back to the tiles. The whole point of using them is to showcase them. With that in mind, I hit upon an idea that was a departure from my wine rack designs of the past – build a display rack, not a mass-storage rack. I tipped the tiles at a 45-degree angle, which would show off the bottles and show off the tiles in spaces that had no bottles.

I wrote about this project in more detail and with more pictures on my website: www.warriorwoodwork.blogspot.com

Specific post here.

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