Vintage Kitchen Cart Makeover

Good morning, good morning! If you caught up on my Fourth of July holiday adventures yesterday, you saw a sneak peek at couple of projects I did at my parents' river house over the weekend. Today I'm sharing the first of those - a vintage kitchen cart makeover!

When my parents first bought the river house, but before they closed on it, the previous owners had an estate sale at the house. It was FULL of stuff. So much stuff. My parents bought a few things, which they then left at the house since they had just bought the home - kind of funny, huh? :) One of the things my dad spotted at the sale was this awesome/but horribly painted vintage kitchen cart.

I didn't even know it was one of the items from the sale until a couple of months ago, when I spotted it in the garage and asked if I could give it a new paint job. I mean, it's just begging for it, right? That orange is...let's just say...not my ideal color. It was also a little rusty in certain places (although it was hard to distinguish rust from the orange paint). It had probably been used outside a ton in its previous life.

I started by giving it a good sanding with some low grit (60 - very coarse) sandpaper to remove as much paint as I could and rough up the other surfaces so that the new paint would stick. Turns out it practically flaked off the handles, but wouldn't budge off the tray areas. That makes me think that the handles were originally unpainted.

I sanded and sanded, but it soon became clear that the surfaces, especially the top tray, wouldn't ever be perfectly even. Oh well! It's just an old cart, after all. It didn't have to be perfect. I made sure to clean it off really well so I didn't have any flaky old paint or dust messing up the new paint job. I could at least control that part!

In this next photo, you can see the leftover rusty, rough spots on the tray's surface even after I sanded, but hey, anything's better than that orange :).

Then I got to work on painting it a happy light aqua color. I used Krylon Indoor/Outdoor spray paint in Ocean Blue (Gloss). I found the best price for it at Walmart (about $3.75 per can). It took me two and half cans to cover the entire cart with two coats. Not bad! The key to a good spray painting job is to move quickly and apply it thinly and evenly. Remember that it won't look perfect on the first coat. Take your time.

The final product turned beautifully! Take a look:

My mom and I had fun styling it up on the screen porch for a little photo shoot. I put some bright pink placemats on the top tray surface, which was both functional (cover up the rougher patches you saw in previous photos) and pretty since the color complimented the aqua nicely.

A few glass tumblers, an ice bucket and a pitcher of water made for a cute little drink stand. Oh, and a few flowers from my mom's yard don't hurt either :). Don't you just love hydrangeas?

We played around with the styling a bit too. Why not have some cookies there as well? Mmm...oatmeal raisin...

Or maybe some silver water goblets?

It's a perfect addition to the screen porch (in my opinion - mom, do you agree?). Turns out it's really nice to have an extra surface near the dining table out there. We even put the computer on it at one point so my parents, Charlie and I could all Facetime with my brother and his wife out there! The fact that it's a cart makes it easy to move and use in different places as well. I'm sure we'll be using it a lot.

Let's take a look at the transformation one more time, before and after style:

What a difference, huh? Watch out parents, I might have to steal it from you some day. It's just such a fun piece with its new aqua color!

Have a wonderful day, y'all!

Have you made over a cart like this before? If you have, what have you used it for?

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