How To: DIY Ombre Bar Cart

*All photos by: Amy Bartlam

Moving to a new place can be an exciting, but overwhelming experience. It’s a great opportunity to start designing from scratch and give your life a new look. BUT new furniture can get expensive real quick, and it’s really wasteful and, uh, awful for the environment, to keep buying new goodies and sending the old ones to landfills.

So work with what you’ve got to update it! With the help of Homepolish’s Haley Weidenbaum, we revived a teal bar cart to give it a modern update!

Step 1: Buy your supplies

You’ll need 1 can of Krylon copper paint, 1 can of black spray paint, 1 can of white primer spray paint, 1 mask, and 1 dropcloth. With the exception of the Krylon spray paint (thanks, Amazon), Home Depot will have everything you need. Pro tip: When purchasing the white spray paint, make sure it’s a primer that helps with extra coverage.

Step 2. Prime your piece

Clean off the surface of the piece to remove any dirt or dust. If you are painting over a dark color, it’s important to prime it first. A good prime makes it easier when you are applying the new color. When spraying, you should be 6-8 inches away from the piece, making circular motions with the can. 

Step 3. The color change

After allowing the white primer to dry, start spraying the top of your piece with the lighter of your colors, in our case, the copper. Make sure you get inside all the nooks and crannies! (They can easily hide.) On the legs, bring the copper down further than you want the ombre to land. Since you will be covering with a darker color, you want to give yourself some leeway in getting the ombre right.

Step 4. The ombre effect

This is much easier than it looks! After you allow the copper to dry, start painting the black from the bottom up. As you get closer to where the copper starts to pop up, lightly spritz the black paint over the copper, for a misted look. This isn’t an exact science, but because you’ve given yourself plenty of copper space to work with, you can try a few times to get the desired look you are going for.

Step 5. Style it like crazy!

What fun is a bar cart if it isn’t pretty? Cute glassware (check ebay), succulents, and, of course, our Muhanga Nesting Bowls help give this cart some character. And what bar cart is complete without some spirits? You can see we’ve got some good tequila on the top rack. Bottoms up!