Make your own £50 Kitchen Trolley/Cart Island

Hi, I’m Claire and I’ve been making all kinds of stuff over on my YouTube channel  ‘Making It Out Of The Woods‘.

I’m new to woodworking and making in general, my projects so far have been a way to practice and develop my skills. My confidence has grown a little and I now feel able to attempt some more functional builds.

“When I let go of who I am , I become who I want to be”

I’m calling these new builds my FOXY MAKES – I’ll still be making crazy stuff over on my channel too, but this blog will focus on, and share the slightly more functional makes with you!!

When my friend Vikkie, The Carpenter’s Daughter , a YouTube DIY’er and awesome food blogger Tastefully Vikkie suggested that I write a blog detailing my maker journey, I was reluctant.

YouTube, Instagram and even Facebook are relatively new to me, and I certainly didn’t have a clue how to write a blog.

Vikkie, however,  was relentless and so here we are, I’m blogging and you are invited to come along for the ride – let’s work this out together.

I’m going to show you how a gal with only a few newly acquired (and acquiring) DIY skills, can blog (so far, so good), produce and edit video, save money and make something bespoke.

So, come on, let’s go see how I made my very first FOXY MAKE…

I currently live in a small house with very limited storage and no airing space.

So, when my laundry is done, it sits all grumpy and crumpled in a basket on my kitchen floor. Ironing isn’t my favourite past time and I often find other things to do instead, but eventually I say to myself ‘suck it up buttercup’ and ‘just do it!’ – in the meantime it’s just there, out of place and in my face!

This situation can go on no longer. I have standards to keep, right?

KITCHEN TROLLEY/UTILITY CART

I looked EVERYWHERE to find a modern kitchen trolley that would accommodate my laundry basket and double up as an extra work/storage space for my galley style kitchen.

To be fair, those stylish, Scandinavian, meatball munching folks over at IKEA did come close with their, STENSTORP trolley, on sale for £140 – but it would have required significant adaptations and  involve a 100-mile round trip to my local store.

The only trolley I found that met my exact requirements was on sale at a local retailer, for £550!

Now, this is where I decided to ‘get Foxy’ about it.  I made my own …. and to make it even more challenging, I set myself a budget of £50!

This is how I did it:

GETTING FOXY – DECIDE WHAT YOU NEED:

I wrote out a list detailing both function and form, that is, what I wanted the trolley to do and how I wanted it to look.

It needed:

1. A chunky solid wood top that would work as an extra surface for food preparation
2. To be large enough to accommodate my laundry basket
3. A shelf
4. To be manoeuvrable
5. To incorporate somewhere to hang oven gloves and a tea towel

SOURCING MATERIALS:

I’ve been salvaging items for months, just things that I thought might come in useful. Most of the materials I already had are items that regularly appear in the FREE ADS or on sites such as GUMTREE, often these things are given away for free if you go to collect them. Check these things out, there are hidden gems out there. I’ve listed the items I salvaged and those I had to buy new to complete the project below:

SALVAGED – FREE STUFF PURCHASED
Solid beech worktop off cut                                                                                                                                                                          4 Castors – Ironmongery direct £24       
2 sash window pull handles                   
Pine wood shelving                                 
Broom handle/scrap doweling                                                                                                                                                                   2 3×3 lengths of timber -Wickes £18                                                                                                                                                         8 mini brackets                                                                                                                                                                                       Wood glue £4

HERE WE GO: LET’S GET FOXY:
I’m 5’8, so I built my trolley at a height that best suited me, paying attention to the fact the the legs would be fitted with castors which would affect the overall height of the trolley when completed. 

1. I started by laying out my materials and tools, this helps me check that I have everything – there’s nothing worse than being half way through making something only to discover that you are missing something essential.  

2. I measured the worktop section and then marked out where I wanted the four legs to be. At this point I used my laundry basket to test out how it would fit between the legs.  My worktop offcut was larger than I needed it to be, so I removed a section on the table saw. (I’m saving it for another FOXY MAKE) 

3. I then used the 1×6’s I had cut down in to 8 lengths. These lengths join together to create two frames. One forms the structure at the top of the trolley and the second forms the bottom shelf. 

4. When I was happy that the two frames were square, I joined the four legs to the frames using simple butt joints, (wood end to end) glue and screws, but you could use pocket-holes, dowels or even brackets.  

5. Once the frames are secured to the legs you can see the overall skeleton of the trolley. 

6. At this point I attached the top of the frame to the underside of the beech worktop. This was super easy using the ‘L’ shaped brackets shown. 

7. While upside down (not me – the trolley, silly!) I secured the castors to the bottom of each of the four legs with the long screws that came with them. It’s super important to pre-drill the holes to prevent the screws from splitting the wood when screwing in to the end grain. 

8. Time to turn the entire structure the correct way up. Its really starting to look like a trolley here! FOXY! 

9. Now to create the bottom shelf slats. I recycled two sides of a pine bookshelf and cut it down in to 5cm wide strips on my table saw, (you could use a handsaw, jigsaw or even circular saw).  I then used some oak coloured wood stain to protect the slats and to make them better match the colour of the solid top. 

10. I then trimmed down a length of oak dowelling left from a previous project (you could use a broomstick handle here) to make a tea towel holder. I also sawed the offcut  piece from this in to two halves, then used a them to make two oak pegs and secured  them on the opposite side of the trolley.

11. I then filled the small holes and dings in the worktop with wood filler and sanded it really well. It’s worth putting in the extra effort here because the solid wood came back up to an excellent finish. 

12. Almost finished, just had to hand sand the entire trolley to break any sharp edges.

13. The final and very satisfying step, was to give the top a coat of boiled linseed oil. If you want to use the top for food preparation then I would suggest buying a food safe oil finish, personally, I always use chopping boards. 

FOXY MAKES KITCHEN TROLLEY IS COMPLETE

I really hope you enjoyed following me making this trolley. You can watch the entire build video over on my YouTube channel, Making It Out Of The Woods

Please feel free to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE on YouTube and follow me on InstaGram to keep track of my future makes – there are some fun builds to check out over there. 

**I want to tell you that if you feel like having a go at something like this, then try. Do your best to source free materials and remember everything I did here with power tools can be undertaken with hand tools if you are more patient than I am! It’s so rewarding to do it yourself!**

FOXY TIPS – you could make the solid top with laminated (glued up) 4×2’s or pallet wood. You could also add a drawer (or secret biscuit stash!), a wine rack or even paint the legs. The beauty of this little trolley is that it is fully customizable according to your needs and DIY skill level.

See you soon for another FOXY MAKE and remember folks,
STAY FOXY!!

Claire x