THE Cart

Well, I have mentioned and posted pictures of my cart I found at Lincoln Mill several months ago. I wanted to share the process with you.

The cart when we first got it!

My husband and I found this old cart from an old cotton mill's warehouse sale last summer. It was apparently used to carry the bundles around in. It has a distinct groove in the boards and I wish I knew what it's specific purpose was..If anyone can tell me, please do! I've been searching the web for pictures, but no luck yet. The owner of the building told us that he thought it had to be as old as the building which was at least 100 years old...we knew it wasn't all original,but the bones sure were old!

It has rusty, gooey wheels and old hardware on it. The 2x4's look fairly new, but we kept them there. I pressure washed the entire thing and actually it was so grimy and old that not much came off.

My husband and I debated all the ways to turn it into a coffee table, Take the 2x4s off, lay a piece of  glass across then we realized we had some great wood to use as a top....

Earlier that summer we had the opportunity to take some boards off an old house in TN. I cleaned, fumigated, and sealed the wood and my husband roughly put them on a 1x2 and placed on top of the cart. Now it had a table top!

He also removed the handle because it was long and just wouldn't work for a coffee table (It was NEW too.) We had to find a way to stabilize it, my first idea was to use old yarn spools as legs since it was from the cotton mill. My husband couldn't see how that would work and sent me on a treasure hunt..I found an old plant hanger and he tried to use that..then I showed him what I was thinking with the spools. DING DING!! It worked (but I refrained from saying I told him so). We had to place some wedges to level it out, but it worked perfectly. We then placed some felt pieces on the wheels so it wouldn't harm the hardwood and voila! Our primitive cart coffee table. Total cost for us Less than $75!!

Finished Primitive Cart Coffee Table

***Whenever you salvage wood from a location please be sure to fumigate it! You don't want bugs to emerge once you get it in the house! I will post my process soon!****