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Craft Up-Cycled Pantry Trolley

Up-Cycled Pantry Trolley

55 Comment

A *genuinely* fast and easy DIY project to use up that old Tallboy or chest of drawers, and make that ‘dead space’ (that many of us have in the bottom of our pantry cupboard) a viable and functioning component of your kitchen 🙂

Material

  • 1 Old Tallboy Chest of drawers
  • 1 Set of 4 Castor Wheels
  • 1 Power Box on 2m lead (or 2 outlet power board on long cord)
  • Approx 5 Nail in Cable Clips
  • 1 Large Cup Hook

Method

  1. Decide how tall you want the finished trolley to be by measuring your space (where you're going to keep the trolley) and then deducting the height of the castors, and the largest appliance that you are going to sit on the top of the trolley.
  2. Remove all drawers (bar the bottom one), and their runners. (These will not be reused for this project, but if you like the look of them they could be retained, possibly, for up-cycled shelves?)
    Gently remove the top of the Tallboy and any internal framework that was attaching it to/supporting it on the cabinet- take care with this as you will be refitting it back on top of your resized Tallboy.
  3. Carefully measure, FROM THE BASE of the Tallboy, the height that you need the finished trolley to be, less the height of the castors and the wooden too that you just removed. This will leave the amount that you need to remove from the height of the cabinet.
    i.e. If your Tallboy top is 20mm deep, and your castors are 50mm high (total 70mm) and you want finished trolley to be 800mm high, you measure 730mm up from the base and that is how high you want the cabinet to be- because, 730mm + 20mm + 50mm= 800mm.
  4. Using a square or a level, rule all the way around the cabinet and then with a handsaw or jigsaw or other suitable cutting tool, remove the excess.
    If needed, lightly sand the edges to remove any splinters of wood.
    Reattach the top (using the same framework that you removed along with the top previously) and using some of the screws from the runners that you removed earlier, fix the bottom drawer in place.
  5. Stand cabinet upside down on a clean flat surface for the next couple of steps...
    Using a hole saw (big enough for double the width of the widest part of the plug on the appliances that you want to sit on top of your trolley) cut a hole in the top, centre of the back panel of the cabinet.
    Mount your power box or power board inside the cabinet and run the cord out of the hole that you just drilled out (nail clip the cord around the inside walls of the cabinet so that it doesn't dangle loosely).
    Screw the cup hook into the back of the cabinet, near to where the cord comes out of the hole (when the trolley is finished, you will coil up the excess cord length and hang it on the hook, ready to use).
    Attach the castors to each of the four corners of the base of the cabinet (If you have a very long or very heavy Tallboy, you may want to also use two castors in the middle of the cabinet base).
  6. Turn your trolley back over onto its castors and you are ready to stock it!
    I keep my Sunbeam Mixmaster, electronic scales and Vege Steamer on the top of mine (run the cords over the back of the trolley , through the hole and plug into your power box.
    I have stored all of my baking 'stuff' cutters/measures/rolling pins/piping bags/scales etc, as well as my Slender Blender and mini chopper, beater mix and all of the various beater attachments (dough hooks etc etc).
  7. The BEST part about this project is that you don't have to sand/prep/stain/second coat stain etc etc etc
    You're basically working with a finished product and ours was finished within a couple of hours... And, since it was finished (3 days ago), I've used it about 5 times- that means 5 times less squatting or bending down to get my HEAVY mixmaster from the back of the only cupboard that I could fit it in to... YAY!!

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Topics

This project was posted by:

  • LaninChris
    • 06 Jul 2016
      12:09 am
Post your project

  • Good use of an unwanted piece of furniture – gumtree have a freebies section where you can pick up stuff like this if you don’t already have one. I like your baskets too 🙂

    • Even better if you can access something for free or at a discounted rate.

      • Thanks Mom71809 😀
        Awesome idea about using a freebie Tallboy!!
        As for the baskets… I am a bit of a self-confessed ‘organisation freak’ 😮
        They’re pretty messy at the moment and need reorganising, but they save me from having meltdowns when I can’t find the Vegemite ha ha ha

      • This was the pantry in January *sigh* LOL
        The space at the bottom, where I now have my pantry trolley, had one of those 30L mini wheelie bins- which we used as a recycling bin 🙂
        I can’t actually remember where I bought the baskets from! Maybe Howard’s Storage World?

    Reply

  • This is another pic, showing the power box and holesaw cut out (just ignore the fact that I have my mixmaster plugged in through the front… That was just to show it plugged in 🙂 )

    • How much did the electrical alterations cost you?

      • Hi June11 🙂
        You can do the electrical work yourself, easily- and legally!
        You just need a power-board. If you can, buy a small, square (or the more traditional rectangle) one with four outlets on it, you can get them quite cheaply- $4 to $40, depending on your budget… You need to look for one that has little holes on base, to wall-mount them. You know, like the picture frames etc that you can buy, with holes in the back instead of metal hangers?
        So, you mark out where you want the power-board to be and put the screws in the wood- leave a couple of mm clearance between the screw heads and the wood- then the holes on the back of your power-board go over the screw heads and it hangs up 🙂
        My husband is an electrician- so he ‘made’ me a PowerPoint using a box and cable and stuff that you can buy from Bunnings… BUT, he said that only licensed sparky’s can do that and suggested the power-board idea- it’s just as effective and keeps in with the ‘easy’ and ‘DIY’ tags on this post 😀

    Reply

  • The pic that I chose for this project sing showing up right, so I’ll put a couple here in the comments 🙂 x

    Reply
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