DIY Entryway Shoe Tray: Create with Leftover Scrap Wood and Tile

We’ve had a pile of tiles (which ended up being the perfect choice for our DIY entryway shoe tray) stacked up by our fireplace for close to six months now. The dogs kind of bound over it on the way to their bed in the corner of our living room and Alex and I have an unspoken agreement to ignore it as we move on to the hundreds of other projects we have on the list that don’t sound as meticulous and tedious as tiling over a brick fireplace.

I floated the idea of painting the whole fireplace black instead of tiling it because it would be easier and we could just tile over the paint if it didn’t work out. It was a real quick no from Alex because he was worried it would turn out too gothic, but somewhere in the last few months (actually not long after I convinced him to do a dark accent wall in our bedroom), he must’ve changed his mind.

While that’s a blog post for another day, it left that stack of tiles to deal with. It was an awkward number – like, 15 tiles – so there they sat for another couple of months. This past weekend was finally my time to shine. We didn’t have any projects planned, we were entering month three of isolation/social distancing so were trying to limit our trips to hardware stores for new supplies, and the baby had just started getting into a somewhat predictable napping schedule.

The triad of scrap wood project productivity.

This project took two days (mostly because I had to wait for the thinset and grout to dry), but will come in handy during those sudden onset Louisiana storms. It’d be perfect for a beginner wanting to test out skills like staining wood, cutting with a miter saw and tiling without doing it on a high stakes project like a kitchen backsplash, for example.

Building a DIY Entryway Shoe Tray

Tools & materials

(I had all of these items on hand, but I’ll list everything out with my measurements as if I had to buy everything new)

• Tiles – this varies wildly in price, of course, based on style, size and design. I had roughly 8”x8” tiles and used six of them. These are similar
• Grout – I used grey sanded grout to match the tiles I had
• Thinset
• Trowel
• Grout float
• Sponge
• Scrap wood – a 1×4 (for the side pieces) and a 1×16” (for the bottom piece – this one is usually sold as a shelf or project panel)
• Sander
• Screws
• Tile spacers (or something you can use to make even spacing between the tiles)
• Wood stain – I used a mix of Varathane Special Walnut and Minwax Driftwood

Optional:

• 4 Braces (I used ones similar to this)
• Black spray paint (this one is our favorite black spray paint, we honestly spray paint everything with it)
• 4 furniture feet (these are similar to ours)
• Mending plates or table leg plate
• Kreg Jig (this is the starter kit version we have)
• Pocket hole screws
• Water based Polycrylic (if using outdoors)

(This list for building a DIY entryway shoe tray is assuming you’ve already got everything in our new homeowner’s toolbox)

How We Did It

Full disclosure, I didn’t really have any size or measurements in mind before I started this project, I just kind of winged it based on the size of everything I had on hand. At first I tried to cut the tile with the cheap manual tile cutter we got to snip subway tiles in our guest bathroom. These guys, at 8”x8”, are obviously much wider than subway tiles and clearly no match for that. So then I pivoted.

Instead of trying to cut the tiles to fit the piece of scrap 1×16” wood I had, I cut the wood down to fit the tiles. I knew I wanted two rows of three tiles, so I laid them out on my wood with spacers in between and measured. It was 23.75”, so my base piece ended up being 16” x 23.75”.

I then measured and cut my 1×4 pieces to go around the sides – for me, these were two cuts at 25.25” and two cuts at 16” (the 25.25” is longer than the 23.75” of the side because you’ve got to account for it overlapping the other 16” side pieces. They’re 0.75” thick.)

Note: If you’ve got a Kreg jig and want to use pocket holes, learn from my mistake and do the pocket holes on the underside of your bottom piece before you start tiling.

If you aren’t going to pocket hole, you can just go right ahead and start tiling. Use your trowel to scoop up some thinset and go full morning bagel, smearing it all over that base piece of wood.

Use the jagged side of the trowel to make some diagonal lines in the thinset before you put your tile on (you don’t want the thinset to be smooth when the tiles go on or it won’t have a good hold on the tile and then won’t dry properly).

Put down your first piece of tile. I usually kind of wiggle it into place to make sure all of the bottom is touching some thinset. Then add spacers to each side that’s going to touch another tile and keep going until you’re done.

This stuff has to try for at least 24 hours (preferably longer, but I’m impatient and wanted to get this project done before the work week started and I got distracted for another six months), so move onto staining the scrap wood.

Staining the Wood

Because I was using up all kinds of things I had around the house, I cut down and used some old table legs we found at a big community garage sale earlier this year as the feet. They were already a pretty, warm kind of wood color so I mixed Varathane’s Special Walnut and Minwax’s Driftwood to get it preeeettty close if I do say so myself.

I honestly have no idea which method is the “right” way to stain wood, but I either use a brush and rag or just good old paper towel depending on how deep I want the color of whatever I’m working on.

Since I knew the color I mixed was pretty much exactly what I wanted without letting it soak into the wood and darken, I just used some paper towel and rubbed it right on there so I could keep the color even. I didn’t bother staining the underside of the base piece that has the tile on it because it’ll never be seen. If you bought your furniture feet new and unstained, make sure you stain those as well.

Boot Tray, Assemble

I initially tried just using wood glue to connect the wood side pieces onto the tiled base piece but that was peak stupid on my behalf. This guy is heavy once it’s got those tiles on and is one hundred percent going to need some reinforcements.

Because I forgot to pocket hole until I’d already tiled, I had to screw it all together the old fashioned way. I added a screw on each end of each of the four side pieces going into the base, then another one on each corner going into the side piece next to it, which meant the sides were connected both to the bottom and to each other.

(I did all this while the thinset was still drying because, again, I’m impatient.)

Optional: Add Decorative Braces

Because I forgot the pocket holes and was too lazy to go through the additional steps of wood filling the screw holes, sanding them down then restaining over those parts, I added some decorative braces to each corner.

The ones I had were just plain stainless steel, so I painted them my favorite matte black color before attaching them. Luckily they fit right over the big, ugly screws and hid them perfectly. I’m the sneakiest.

Wait a Day, Then Grout

By this time, it had been a couple of hours and I was ready for a break (as was the three-month-old who was growing tired of the same five songs on her playmat), so I stopped for the day to let the thinset dry.

The next morning, I grabbed my grout float and my premixed, sanded grout (I’ve never used the kind of grout you mix yourself but don’t really see why I would because that seems inconvenient, messy and I’m no grout connoisseur) and got to work on the second-to-last step.

It’s kind of a bitch to get the grout really into those crevices while working in such a small space and trying not to get too much on the wood parts. Spoiler alert: you’re going to get a lot on the wood parts anyway.

I just scooped some of the grout onto the float and went over the spaces diagonally over and over again until they seemed filled but not overflowing, then I held the float at a steeper angle and flattened it over the whole thing to get the excess off.

By now it’s going to look like a huge mess and there will be grout all over the tiles and you’ll think it looks like dog vomit and want to give up, but don’t!

With a sponge and some warm water it’ll come back to life. They do make special grout sponges, but I just used a regular dish sponge and it was perfectly fine for such a small project.

You’re going to want to dunk the sponge into the warm water and work in small circles over the whole face of the tile, making sure you don’t dig down into the cracks and pull out any of the grout you want to stay put in the seams.

Because this is sanded grout, it’s going to be, you guessed it, sandy, so make sure you keep rinsing out the sponge and changing water as often as you need to. When it’s all clean, use a paper towel to dry it off, again making sure not to go over the cracks if you can help it.

(I also found the sponge and paper towel worked to get the grout off the wooden side bits as well.)

Optional: Add Your Feet

I used mending plates to attach the feet to the (almost) finished tray. A mending plate – at least the one I used – is a flat piece of metal with two holes. I drilled a screw through one hole into the foot, and then drilled a hole the opposite way (upwards) into the underside of the tray to secure them both together.

And, obviously, I repeated this four times so each corner had a foot.

Add Some Sealer

And that’s it! Building a DIY entryway shoe tray isn’t that hard!

Add a couple of coats of polycrylic, especially if you’re planning to keep this bad boy outside like on a porch. Make sure to use the water based polycrylic, not oil-based, or it could yellow and change the color of your stain. This stuff will go on like a milky, kind of white consistency, but don’t worry because it’ll dry clear. I always go for the matte finish because I don’t love the glossy look, but that’s just my preference.

Once that dries, you’re finished! Add some filthy garden shoes, dirty cleats or muddy rainboots and not only will it be a cute way to store something not cute, but you’ll keep your floors a little cleaner as well.

For one weekend’s work and (for me) a $0 budget, I’m pretty happy with how this boot tray turned out.

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