Mini Kitchen Rolling Cart | DIY Furniture

Since we moved into this house 3 1/2 years ago, we’ve been slowly renovating, with our limited budget and our limited time. But the big, daunting renovation hasn’t yet been tackled – the kitchen! I really detest it, so I’ve been keeping my eyes open for small projects I can do to pretty up the kitchen until we can do the big reno. I lucked onto nowathomemom.com and saw Ingrid’s cee-yoot mini kitchen cart project and I’m coveting it. I think any small side table could work and I’ve got my eyes out for one now.

Submitted by: Ingrid

I am a huge fan of IKEA. So it’s no surprise that I’ve been longing for this small BEKVAM kitchen cart since the day we moved in our house and started shopping around for our kitchen items. I never bought it because it was too small and I didn’t have space or a corner to tuck it away. I forgot all about it, until our kitchen renovation was finally over last October.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I was working on different projects at the same time and I showed a picture of this old side table:

Well, this old side table has been in our family for a while; it was in our living room, then my mother used it in her house to store sewing materials and now it’s back in our house. I knew I wanted to update it, give it a new look with a fresh coat of paint. I was browsing the famous “apartment therapy” site from my iPhone, admiring their home tours of the week. I stumbled onto one of their pictures showing us the exact IKEA kitchen cart I want. I loved how the owners transformed it with a coat of paint and told myself I would get one and paint it too. Just like that, it clicked, I got off the couch, told hubby we needed to go to the hardware store and look for more yellow paint.

Total Time Required: A few days for paint drying.

Working Time Required: Less than 5 hours for painting two coats, sanding, and adding handles and bottom rack.

Project Cost: paint: $20, towel racks: $3

Material and Tools Required:

– sandpaper

– drill

– screws

– paint

– paint brush

– wood

– saw

– handles

– casters

Tutorial:

Hubby prepared the table by cleaning it and sanding it.

We really need to get a sanding machine as soon as possible to save ourselves time:

This is the paint I used for this project. I was nervous of not spray painting this piece of furniture and leaving ugly paint brush marks on it. I have to admit that spray painting is still my number one preference.

I started by using a roller but I didn’t like the look, so I used two different paint brushes for this project; a medium size brush and a small brush for the spots I couldn’t easily reach with the medium one.

After the first coat of paint; I let it dry for 2 days because too much paint collected at the bottom of the legs and they were glued to the plastic cover. I sanded the entire table again and gave it a second coat of paint without putting too much paint on the brushes. I don’t know why but this year I’m having tons of unexpected issues when painting furniture. I think, it’s because I’m taking pictures while working and trying to get too many things done at the same time for the blog and last year I hadn’t start blogging yet so I wasn’t as distracted:

We bought a dark stain for the top, however after seeing it sanded and how well it looked next to our island, we decided to leave it natural and only protect it with polyurethane. So, I asked hubby to sand the top very well again. I am loving this ‘real/natural wood’ look that’s going on in our kitchen:

We pulled the cart outside on one sunny day to continue working on it:

I wanted to add handles to this tiny cart, so we could easily move it around our kitchen. We went to the hardware store and found these two towel bars at Reno Depot for only $3.99 each. Because the sides of the cart are so small, these were the only available option:

Here is hubby drilling them to the cart:

Here is a picture of the cart in our kitchen, we were making sure it looked well next to our island and bar stools. The cart doesn’t take too much space and if needed it can easily be moved around:

I wanted to add extra storage space to the bottom of the cart by adding a few pieces of wood. I used my miter saw for this step but you could use a hand saw instead if you are not too scared of using work tools:

I thought I took the exact measurements while hubby was preparing the barbecue but in my next pictures you will see I was off by a bit:

right side:

left side:

It doesn’t look that bad once painted and glued to the cart.

hubby sanded them lightly to remove the splinters:

I wanted to drill or nail these pieces of wood to the table but the wood used would split, so I decided to glue them instead:

In the pictures below, you will not be able to see it very well, but the first piece of wood was warped because it was left out in the rain for several days after working on our downstairs balcony (future post).

Can you see what I’m talking about? If you look closely at the kitchen cart, it’s the first piece of wood that is warped. I don’t mind it anymore, it adds an “antique” feel!

Another important feature that we decided to add to this piece is: wheels to the four legs,  making it a functional kitchen rolling cart:

With the handles and wheels, it’s easy to move it around when preparing food. Unfortunately, Nathan is liking this cart too much;  I find mixing bowls in my living room every day:

You might have also noticed the two baskets on the island. I gave them a coat of white paint and are now used to store my mixing bowls. If you read my previous post, you remember how I used one of the baskets to organize my kitchen counter:

I love, how I was able to turn this piece into three functional projects:

The difficult parts of this project were:

1. taking the piece of furniture outside and inside of the house too many times because of the bad weather
2. finding time for hubby to sand it (3 times)
3. keeping Nate occupied

Since, the renovation, I’ve been craving color in our kitchen and added a few red accessories to it. Now, with the yellow bar stools and kitchen cart; our kitchen is full of color. We’ve been living with our kitchen cart for over two weeks and I love it, it’s the first thing you see when you come in to the space:

It might not be the exact duplicate of the IKEA kitchen cart; it’s much smaller but it’s functional and only cost us $23.00 for the paint and towel bars.

Ingrid blogs about being a stay-at-home mom (to a 2-year-old son) with a passion for home decor on her site nowathomemom.com. She’s a sucker for pink spray paint and a good D.I.Y. project and will, when given the chance, combine the two.