You could buy an inexpensive wine rack at your local discount department store. You could. But...it wouldn't have the unique look of a DIY wine rack, a wine rack that you made yourself. Also, if you're good at sourcing materials, you could make one of these wine racks for free or cheap. Now that would be nice, wouldn't it? You'd could spend the money that you would have spent on the wine rack on actual wine. I think we can all agree that having more money for fine vino is better than not having it.

What can you build a wine rack from? Tubular stuff, like wide cardboard mailing tubes or PVC pipe are really excellent. If you're handy, you can salvage wood, like pallet wood, and use that. Even aluminum cans can be transformed into a wine rack. Other materials I have seen used for wine racks: Metal pipes, boiled wool,and old metal film reels.

One thing to keep in mind: Wine bottles are heavy. If you are affixing a DIY wine rack to the wall, be sure that you consider the total weight of the rack when it is holding its full capacity of full bottles of wine. You will need to mount the wine rack to wall studs, not to drywall. Learn more about mounting heavy objects for walls from a professional remodeler.

The $15 DIY wine rack: Blogger Shanty2Chic, a DIY carpenter near Dallas, published step-by-step directions for making this very cool DIY wooden wine rack. Her directions include which tools you need to do the project. Spoiler alert: You need power tools.

PVC pipe wine rack: Blogger Adventures in Creating published directions for building a wine rack out of PVC pipes. You'll need a way to cut the pipes, and to drill holes for the screws that hold the pipes together.

Chicken feeder wine rack: Chicken feeders don't usually look chic. However, Hometalk member Vanessa C. turned two chicken feeders into a very industrial modern-looking wine rack. it would be perfect for a contemporary house, or for an industrial-chic house. Or maybe I should say "industrial-chick" house...I can't resist a pun.

Chaya Kurtz writes for Networx.com.