Rolling With It: How We Created a Custom Rolling Pin Display Wall in Just 24 Hours
Epic collections deserve an epic display. We spent a sunny weekend in small town Wisconsin designing and building a rolling pin display wall that served to showcase this couple’s incredible and extensive collection.
Read on for a behind the scenes look at one of the most unique custom builds we’ve ever done and the incredible stories behind it.
The People
Homes should tell a story. Who are the people who live there? What are their interests and passions? What makes your family unique should shine through in your space.
One of our most favorite things about this job is making connections, meeting people, learning their stories and helping them to build and upgrade their space to highlight their personalities.
Homes should tell a story, but this home tells a thousand.
We traveled to Portage, WI with my aunt to get to know and spend time with her dear friends, Bernie & Dennis. Their home? A renovated old church. Their collections? Extensive. Their stories? Unending. This couple has no shortage of personality in their home. It’s seeping out of every corner!
This couple shares a passion for many things, but most notably cooking & baking, collecting, gardening & growing and above all, all things Martha Stewart.
The first thing you notice in their home is their incredible kitchen. It boasts a giant stainless steel island, commercial grade stove and refrigerator, a floor to ceiling shelf displaying serving bowls and collectibles (complete with rolling ladder) and countless kitchen gadgets and utensils. This kitchen was designed to be a space for baking, cooking, teaching and trying new things together with friends.
Henry’s favorite space in this home was actually on the outside. A beautiful greenhouse that runs the length of the church. This is a green thumb’s dream, with many beautiful, and mostly edible, plants.
In the middle of the greenhouse? A gorgeous “Martha green” clawfoot Kohler bathtub and a future vision of relaxing surrounded by nature.
Bernie & Dennis are people after our own hearts. They are curious and inventive. They are dreamers and doers. If they have an idea, they’ll find a way to make it happen. And so, of course, putting us all together for one weekend would lead to not just a project, but one of epic proportions!
The Plan
Bernie & Dennis are massive collectors. There is nothing they have just one of. They built an entire loft in their home that functions as a full Martha Stewart and cookbook library. Their basement contains jars and jars of canned fruits & jams (home grown and home made, of course). Beautiful dishes and serving bowls are displayed throughout their kitchen.
As avid bakers, one of their most extensive collections is their rolling pins. Rolling pins for rolling dough and making pasta. Holiday themed, Martha green, big, small, they’ve got them all.
Having seen the hanging rolling pin display we made for my aunt, Bernie & Dennis hoped to collaborate with us to create something similar.
Now these two never do anything on a small scale (their home is a renovated old church, for goodness sake!), so of course their rolling pin display would evolve into something bigger than imagined.
Bernie & Henry worked together to find the wall on which to hang the rolling pins, as well as draw up some sketches and brainstorm ideas.
Now that the idea was hatched, it was time to get creating, and we only had 24 hours to do it!
The Project
After returning from the hardware store with the necessary supplies (1x3” boards, plywood, and tapcon concrete screws), we started this project by cutting a rounded groove into the 1x3” boards. This would be the “shelf” to hold the round rolling pins. This was done using a table saw and running the boards through at an angle.
The next step was the most tedious and time consuming and it was all hands on deck! We hand-sanded each grooved board until they were smooth. Sanding helps paint to go on smoothly and its both prettier to look at and to touch!
Once the shelves were sanded smooth, it was time to build the wall we’d be attaching them to. Next step: cut the plywood to fit the space!
Then we used a laser level (an incredible FB marketplace find of Bernie & Dennis’s, by the way!) to mark where we’d be attaching the shelves.
After a quick snack break (malts and popcorn courtesy of Dennis), it was time for some exciting steps!
We took the 1x3” boards which now had a rounded groove and were sanded smooth and cut them into smaller shelves at the lengths we wanted. (This wall would end up having a grand total of THIRTY shelves!)
Henry, with some major help from Dennis, then attached each board to the plywood wall from behind, so they were floating without visible screws.
Then it was the moment we had all been waiting for, bringing the finished “walls” inside. Once we got these up we realized two things immediately. 1) This wall was MASSIVE and 2) This may have been the coolest project we’ve ever done in such a short amount of time.
With darkness fully upon us and a 4 hour drive ahead of us, we were at the final stretch of what we could do. Henry secured the plywood to the church walls temporarily with tapcon concrete screws, and instructed Dennis & Bernie to reinforce it with a larger size as soon as they could. . But we couldn’t leave without seeing this wall doing what it was meant to…. Displaying the rolling pin collection!
The final step on this project we left for Bernie & Dennis to complete, and that is to paint. The plan is to paint it the same color of the walls, which is of course, a Martha Stewart paint color: Peat.
We love interesting projects and interesting people and this weekend we spent in Portage was seriously the best combination of both. At IDIA we live for builds like this that are unique, creative and help to give your home as much personality as you have. A rolling pin rack is a custom build, but an entire rolling pin wall? Truly one of a kind.
If you like home renovation projects and feel inspired by projects like this, be sure to follow us at @idiaforyourhome and if you are a fellow baker, gardener or Martha Stewart enthusiast, follow Bernie or Dennis at @berniewonggreen or @dennis_r_landon or their company @greenfernfarmllc.
