Art Cart

I wanted storage for my art supplies. I had looked around for storage and thought why buy pieces that sorta worked. Then I thought why not just build a piece suited to my needs and I did.

The first thing I made were the drawers. I first cut all the pieces for all fourteen drawers. I then assembled the drawers stained them and attached the hardware.

I then assembled the shell of the cart. I decided instead of using plywood for the panels on the sides and back I used bead board. The studio has bead board and I thought it would be kind of cool to have it on the furniture as well.  I also figured that since it was going to have wheels on it and the back would most likely be seen I wanted it to have a more interesting finish on it.

This is where I got stuck last year. Here I had placed the frames the drawers would sit on. In this picture I have wires helping hold them up so I could get spacers between them. I put the spacers in and got it all together but when I went to put the drawers in and they didn’t  fit. I had to take it back apart as a result I ended up breaking a couple of the frames. I was frustrated at this point and had to regroup.

After nearly a year I finally had  repaired the frames and properly spaced them. The drawers were fine tuned to slide easily in and out. I also glued in drawer guides to keep the drawers from going in crooked.

For the top I had a piece of 3/4″ plywood. I routed a groove around the edges and then took 1″x2″ board and routed a tongue and mitered the ends. I glued the board in the groove so the raw edges to the plywood wouldn’t show. I then decided to laminate the top in case I spilled something or got paint on it would be easy to clean.

I made the drawers  large because when I go to use my medium I wanted  it easy to find what I was looking for. The first thing I did was figure out how wide the spaces need to be. I used 1/4″ thick boards and staple them to the inside fronts and backs of the drawers. I thought that way if I no longer wanted the drawers to be laid out that way it would be easy to take out and change. I then took the boards that run from the front to the back of the drawers back out and notched them every 2″ to make them adjustable. I cut a bunch of 1/4″ thick spacers to slide into the notches.

This was the best part for me. I was extremely happy to get my supplies out of the boxes and to where I could easily find them. I even have room left in the drawers to expand. Right now my art cart is living in my house. The next thing I may do is get rid of the kitchen tabel and replace it with the easel.