Scavenger Chic

DIY Bar Cart with Upcycled Sewing Machine Drawers, Hardwood Flooring and a Shutter

• By Joan
• October 6, 2021
• 9 Comments

DIY Bar Cart

With Upcycled Sewing Machine Drawers, Hardwood Flooring and a Shutter

My sister has a booth at a local antique store and she’s always acquiring fun things.  So when I get bored of my own projects I bug her to see what I can play with from her collection.  That is where this set of vintage sewing machine drawers and frames came from.  What can you make from these? I don’t know!

She is also the one who gave me the recent mirror which now has a skull face, the vintage tool chest,   another bar cart, a trio of barrel staves, and a chicken incubator which became a coffee table.  There may have been more but you get the idea.

After letting the sewing machine drawers sit around for a couple of months, I had my eureka moment.  Those side drawer holders are the perfect length to hold a wine bottle!  You’re looking at a future DIY bar cart.

A bar cart can not live on a wine rack alone, it needs legs.  That’s where this old blue shutter comes into play. It’s 17″ wide, just slightly wider than my new wine rack and when cut down I ended up with 2 sides 27″ in length.

Yes, the termite eaten end of the shutter on the right was cut off.  Luckily nobody was home.

Cut off the lip on the side of the  shutter and sand.

For the top, use a piece of plywood cut the same width as the shutters and the length equal to the 2 shutter thicknesses plus the width of the sewing machine drawer holders.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about just reference the above picture.

Use wood screws to attach the plywood top to the shutter. Make sure your screws go thru the thickest part of the shutter, the corners.

I spray painted the shutter and the underneath side of the plywood a satin black.

Cut hardwood flooring to fit exactly over the plywood top.  You could also use stained wood planks or sanded pallet wood.

Attach the hardwood flooring to the plywood top with a couple globs of builders adhesive.  I also reinforced the hold with a few finish nails from my pneumatic nailer.

 

Screw the sewing machine drawer frames to the underside of the plywood. 

By waiting until the top hardwood flooring was installed, I now had 2 thicknesses of wood to screw thru.

The distance between the front of the drawer frame and the back was just wide enough to hold a wine bottle, but with any jiggling the wine bottle would fall thru the hole.  Add molding or other scrap wood to prevent the inevitable wine bottle fall.  

I used a nail gun to attach these thin strips to the cross pieces.

On the bottom part of the shutters add a couple shelf supports.  These are nailed into the thicker part of the shutter.

Another piece of scrap plywood is cut to size and nailed directly to the shelf supports.

More vintage oak hardwood flooring is glued and nailed to the plywood.

Finish the edge with  a scrap piece of wood.  This one happens to be a 1×3 but use whatever you have to hide the rough edges of the plywood and flooring.

For the sewing machine drawers I cut a few pieces of scrap wood to compartmentalize the drawers.  Use wood glue to secure or nail a few finish nails from the outside of the drawer.

I thought my drawer storage for the bar cart would look great with a pop of color.  I taped off the top edges and sprayed the insides of the sewing machine drawers blue.

You can see the drawers on the bottom of the bar cart here.  Let’s just say, I didn’t like them. The blue was popping a little too much.  The next time you see the drawers they will be painted black.

Still needed to hide the plywood and flooring edge on the top of the bar cart.  Pallet wood to the rescue, stained with dark walnut.

Building is just about complete, just need a couple accessories, wheels and a handle.

The wheels I used are these beautiful FactorDuty 4 All Black Metal Swivel Plate Caster Wheels Heavy Duty from Amazon.  A little too wide to fit just on the end of the shutter so I had to add a little more scrap wood. Just when you think you’re all finished with construction….

And one more piece of hardwood flooring (on both sides) covers all that mess.

I still used 2 of the sewing machine drawers but I painted over the blue with black spray paint.  So much for my pop of color. 🙄 

The handle was from Hobby Lobby.  If it’s not half price, just wait a week.

Vintage sewing machine drawers do make a great start to a DIY bar cart.  Who knew?

Until next time, stay inspired.

 

A couple more DIY bar carts to consider.