I didn't really have a place for this in my home (or think that carefully about what exactly I was going to do with it!) but I liked the handle and I thought what home doesn't need a bar cart :) (or tea trolley if a cart of booze isn't up your street!).

It really needed new wheels but removing these ones and replacing them was going to be a tricky and expensive job, and I didn't want to replace the castors totally, again because little gold push castors are expensive, and the originals are cute! Overall I quite liked the look of the piece; it was all old and worn and needed some updating to make it a modern piece rather than just tired.

So as usual it need a good cleaning, and then I totally took it apart to make further cleaning and re-painting easier. And oh did it come apart! There were lots of nuts and bolts and bits of metal which made me slightly concerned at remembering where everything went when putting it back together, but I have built many an Ikea flat pack in my time so I went ahead with confidence!

The steps I took to makeover this bar cart included:

1) stripping the wood shelves and re-staining and sealing them - they look very similar but a less orangey brown and in good condition.

2) repainting the legs white - the legs we painted with a gloss white metal paint and were chipped and worn - I painted them with a white chalk paint (3 coats) and sealed them with a polycrylic topcoat for no reason other than it's the paint I had!

3) cleaned the wheels then covered them totally in antique gold rub 'n' buff.

4) kept the handle wood but applied antique gold rub 'n' buff to the metal parts - they were white before.

5) stenciled the top shelf in white then sealed - I used a slightly deco-style stencil and thought this modernised the piece and added some interest and detail.

As I said before, this bar cart hasn't had an amazing transformation where the before and after pictures are unrecognisable, but the gold details, fresh paint and stain and stenciling, make it a usable more modern piece now! That and the WD40 i sprayed on the wheels that stopped the mad squeaking whenever I moved it!

I decided to used this as a static piece of furniture rather than something that will be moved about regularly, and I put it in our dining room which has a more country cottage feel with greys, whites and a dresser which is a contradiction in styles, but I think it fits well :)

Privacy Statement: We do not share personal information with third-parties nor do we store information we collect about your visit to this blog for use other than to analyze content performance through the use of cookies, which you can turn off at anytime by modifying your Internet browser's settings. We are not responsible for the republishing of the content found on this blog on other Web sites or media without our permission. This privacy policy is subject to change without notice.