My DIY Bar Cart

Ah, Pinterest. I save it for the evenings, to read during ad breaks or if the show we’re watching starts to bore me.

In the old house I used a kitchen cart in the bathroom as the cabinet. It was much cheaper to put a pedestal sink in and buy a piece of cheap furniture to use as a cabinet than to buy a vanity have it installed. The cart was an ex-display piece from Freedom, if I recall correctly. Bargain!

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I wasn’t sure what to do with it in the new house. It didn’t match the style of any furniture, though the kitchen was white so I figured it wouldn’t stand out like a sore toe in there. Then I saw lots of bar carts, DIY and new, appearing on Pinterest and that looked like a good way to serve alcohol out on the deck without carting bottles and glasses out from the kitchen.

Only problem was, the middle shelf was in the wrong place. You couldn’t fit most bottles of spirits in either gap. But that was easy enough to fix. Being flat-pack furniture, it had been put together with screws and an alan key, I just had to unscrew the shelf, drill new holes where I wanted it, and reattach.

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It was then that I discovered it fits perfectly under the kitchen bench.

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I tried it out at the weeding and tennis party, and immediately wanted improvements. I’d used a plastic tub as a drawer for the bottles, but the whole cart moved when I tried to get inside it. My solution:

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That’s a cord wrapped around each leg twice, which is strong enough to prevent the bottles falling out but flexible enough that I can get to them when I need to.

Serving drinks was messier than anticipated, and when I found I needed to wash glasses to reuse them I fetched a bucket of soapy water and a tea towel. There was nowhere for the towel, so we installed two rails. I could hang two towels, or used one rail to hang tools on, if I ever get that fancy.

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Needing to consult and search for recipes meant getting my phone or cocktail book all sticky, so I needed somewhere to safely stow the latter, too. One document holder adaption later…

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The pool in our new house has a liner, so the possibility of broken glass getting into it and causing a leak is a bit scary. I’ve bought a collection of plastic glasses to use instead. They fit in the basket – which I can use to carry inside all the dirty glasses later.

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And, of course, I’ve got all inspired and bought some more cocktail ingredients…

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So I’m all set for bar cart test number 2: our Melbourne Cup Day BBQ.

Though I might have to do a little private check first. I think I have the ingredients for a chocolate martini in there…

2 thoughts on “My DIY Bar Cart

  1. Entertaining outside, if the ground surface is paved or anything like that, really requires plastic stuff – for eating and drinking out of. I broke so much stuff at our last house before I realised that. You can get decent plastic stuff for outside entertaining at reasonable prices (it doesn’t all have to have PowerPuff Girls on it or stuff like that!). And pool liners make it even more important!

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