bar cart rast hack.

Over the past few months, as we began to prepare for the move, Mr. Spouse was desperate for a man cave. Bless his heart, our baby apartment didn't quite provide a space for all of his sports memorabilia, cycling equipment, and general display of manhood that the guy so deserved. Almost as soon as we bought our house, we knew we wanted to convert the former owners' nursery into Mr. Spouse's office /slash/ man cave. Trading in diapers for decanters seemed rather fitting, after all.

However, just because it would now house all things manly, I wasn't about to send off for the La-Z-Boy catalog. Mr. Spouse agreed that he would enjoy more of a Mad Men style than a Meathead style. Fine by me. We started by finding a fabulous Chesterfield couch at a local consignment shop.

The sofa just oozed of that old fashioned bar feel, so we thought it would be neat to build a bar cart to be housed in the office alongside the sofa. Don Draper would be proud, we thought.

Not wanting to break the bank with this little projecto, I remembered I had seen a campaign-style Rast hack on Little Green Notebook not too long ago.

The simplistic cut of the chest along with the shiny brass would give the office/man cave a sense of vintage style while still being a vehicle to letting boys be boys.

I started off by grabbing a Rast Chest from Ikea for $34.99, laying out all of the parts, and assembling the piece.

Once assembled, I took the chest outside to paint.

Initially, I planned on painting the chest in a high-gloss orangey red. But once I got all of Mr. Spouse's manly memorabilia into the room, I realized that was going to clash with way too many things. Call me safe, but I decided that a super high gloss black would be the most classic and best thing for the space. So two coats of Rustoleum's High Gloss Black later, the chest was looking so 1950's man cave-esque.

While the paint was drying, I ran to Home Depot to grab up some brass finishings for the cart. Coming in at 2 George Washington's each, I bought three pairs of brass pulls...

...three sets of brass corner braces for $2.00 each...

...and four brass casters for $3.00 each.

After having let the paint cure for 48 hours, I began applying all of the brass goodies. I started by attaching the pulls. As these pulls would simply be covering the hole originally intended for the wood knob by Ikea, I did not have to fill any holes or anything. I simply measured three inches from the top of each drawer to insure that all of the pulls would be attached at the same height:

...and used the included screws to affix the pull to the drawer.

I loved the scroll detail the pulls gave to the otherwise clean, crisp drawers!

I then began attaching the corner braces to the front and sides of the chest to give it more of a campaign flavor.

I loved how they really brought a sharp, masculine feel to the glossy, smoothy paint:

My last step was to attach the brass casters to the chest in order to take the piece from chest to cart. Since the chest was not a completely solid bottom, I was only able to use three out of four screws to affix the casters. As this piece will not be holding too much weight, I felt that this would be perfectly stable.

To say Mr. Spouse was plum smitten with the results would be quite the understatement.

All the cart needed were the decanters Mr. Spouse inherited from his grandfather and some martini glasses:

I think the men of Sterling, Draper, Price would be quite pleased with our little $60.00 bar cart, don't you? I can't wait to share the rest of Mr. Spouse's surprisingly stylish man cave with y'all!