I have been wanting a bar cart for a while, but all of the good carts at the thrift stores seemed to have been picked up. Bar carts are a pretty big fad right now, so the pickings are slim; however, the great thing about thrifting is that if you are patient, like really, really patient, eventually you’ll find something. Case in point, last week, I was at a Goodwill that I don’t often frequent, and I found a wine holder that I thought had some potential. I consulted with Joey, and he agreed that we could make it work. As usual, he was right! It took a little work, but I now have a perfect bar cart.
One of the first things I did, was take off the wavy metal wine holder racks. They were easy to remove, because they were screwed into the rack legs. Then I got out my sanding paper, and I spent a good deal of time sanding off old paint. Once it was sanded down, I sent Joey outside to spray paint the frame gold. One of the downsides to living in a condo, is that we don’t have private outdoor space to paint in. Unfortunately, that means whenever we want to paint something, we have to run across the street to a parking lot and find an empty area. And since we live in Seattle, we also have to wait for a break in the rain before we can do any painting. It’s quite an ordeal.
Beyond the spray paint, there were a few embellishments that we added. For instance, the original rack didn’t actually have any shelf dividers. When we were at Goodwill, we went to the kitchen area and found some plastic trays that fit the shelf openings. The plastic looked cheap, so Joey spray painted the trays white.
The other issue was that it didn’t have any wheels. I was really adamant that it needed to have wheels. I’m not sure why, because I’m not really planning on rolling it around the living room, but it seems much cooler with wheels. I bought a 4 pack of Everbilt 1-5/8 in. Plastic Wheel Stem Casters from Home Depot. They were only about $5. After the paint had dried on the rack, I turned it upside down, took off the rubber soles, and installed the wheels. The stems were just a little too thin to fit, so Joey wrapped them with paper, to make sure they were snug. I gave it a whirl around the room to test it out, then I got out my alcohol and wine glasses and arranged them on the shelves.
Now we have a bar cart that is the envy of all our friends, and believe it or not, we only spent about $20 for everything, including the paint.
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