Cart Project Finished

 Last fall, I shared that I was getting ready to start re-habbing this cart which I brought home from my dad's garage. He used it for his tools and, as you can see, it was in very rough shape. It has taken awhile, but this project is finally finished!

After trying a few different grades of sandpaper, it was apparent that no amount of sanding was going to fix all of this cart's issues. So we asked a friend to sandblast it and he generously did so...using my dad's sandblaster which his neighbor had purchased at my auction. So in a sad but nice sort of way, my dad participated in this little project.

After the sandblasting was done, Spouse took on the job of spray painting, so all of the credit for this project goes to him. I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

The only disappointing part of the project was that I fell short of my initial "vision" for it, shown below in this Pinterest photo. I had planned to paint the shelves in three colors to match my craft room but as you can see, the inspiration cart has handles whereas my cart has "legs" on the corners. Because the legs look like they're almost part of the shelves (instead of being completely separate as in the inspiration photo), it was hard to determine a color scheme that worked. So I opted for a galvanized silver color for the entire cart which makes it more versatile. But I will always love this three-color cart! *sigh*

Anyway...moving on! :) I bought new screws and Spouse put the cart back together. I really do love the simplicity of the re-habbed silver cart!

Even sandblasting did not remove all the imperfections in the cart. It had had just had too many layers of paint and too much hard use to erase all of that. "It's character," Spouse reminded me. Very true.

The new screws were only available in brass. At first I thought I'd spray paint them to match the cart, but then we opted to leave them as is. After all, the silver and brass combination is popular right now.

I have a couple of spots where I could put the cart in my craft room but I'm not sure yet exactly where it will go. Of course, my dad used to roll the cart wherever he needed it and I can, too. That's the nice thing about a cart!

I also haven't decided exactly how to use the shelves, but another good thing about a cart is that it gives you more horizontal storage/display space that can be changed as needed.

So now I have a few items from my dad's shop cleaned up and put to use in our house. I know that he and my mom would have gotten a big kick out of that.

jp