I was looking for a way to safely transport wet/dry large paintings in my small SUV and happened to see one that Nancy Harper had. Nancy was kind enough to post the photo and said that her husband had built it. With her blessing-I began to build my own. It was a great starting point for me and I am always grateful for how helpful artists are to one another. I am happy to share what I know and how I built my car painting carrier rack.

I am going to do my best to explain and cover all the little silly things that took about 4 days to figure out. I am not an architectural engineer but have some good ole bulldog determination so figured most of the kinks out. My husband Dave was a huge help and mentor Jim Richards gave it a thumbs up too!

The amazing thing about this rack is you make it custom for your own car. So do some measuring and allow for the door to close and watch the angle of your back door as I figured out how much I loose with my severe angle. I also had to get above the wheel hubs in my car so once I got 2 shelves built then I was able to go wider to carry larger paintings. You are basically building a rectangular box frame with some additional supports across for support. Think of an old fashioned bed frame with slats. That is your base.

I built my base to be about 36 inch wide and 48 inches deep. I went up 4 inches per shelf to allow for almost anything to fit- even 2 of them!

Keep in mind that you will be sliding them in across the slats/supports so you want them often enough to catch whatever size you would happen to want to put on them. In other words- if the painting is shorter that the 48 inches deep- you want to catch it on some support in between or else it would fall through. I have since added cross bars about every 15 inches to catch any size.

So back to my custom design…once I got above the wheel hubs which was 2 shelves- then I was able to go out wider to about 48 inches and then worked my way up with more shelves.

To build all this I used the heavy duty 1/2 inch PVC pipe from Lowe’s…It’s $1.50 for a 12 Foot piece. They will even do free cuts for you so it will fit in your car to get it home. I bought many of the Cross and T shaped connectors to build it as I went. The T pieces are about .46 cents and the Cross pieces are $1.25 or so. (You do not want any of them to be threaded) Sort of like tinker toys. The saving tool was a pipe cutter that was $11.00 and worth every penney. They first day we were sawing with a pvc saw. Too slow- you will be cutting lots of pipe. And word for the wise- measure carefully- if you are even 1/2 inch short into the connectors it will come apart easily.

I did several test runs with this and have modified as I learned. I have a hard time pushing the pipe together tight enough-did not want to glue. I finally was putting the whole thing on the ground and twizzling it in all directions to shove the connections together pretty tight. I have used a few bungie cords but they are really not needed. I discovered that the paintings could slide on the smooth pvc pipe so bought some large furniture thumbtacks like you put in the bottom of a leg of a chair. I tap them into the back of the painting just to catch that pvc pipe and it does not slide a bit. Last modification as I am carrying some large heavy paintings- I added some mid way support legs from the sides to the floor just to give extra reassurance.

I am attaching as many photos as I have. I will make a final comment about the gluing- We have not done so yet- it’s holding together fine and we want to be able to move it or change it. And the cars have a bit of a natural slant with the seats down so it allows for some natural give if it’s not glued. As far as price- I spent about $50 or so and way too much time- hopefully if you go to build one- I will have helped you save time at least! We can also just pull this out and stand it against the garage wall when not in use!

If you have any questions and want to ask- please feel free and do so here so that I can answer for everyone to see. This has made a huge difference. I love mine:) Best of luck!