Urban Patina: Authentically Crafted Home + Gift: Repurposed Industrial Merchandise Rack

We were recently asked to create a custom merchandise rack for a local business. The only real parameters were that the piece needed to have an industrial feel and that it should be on wheels so that it's easy to move around and allows for more flexibility in terms of placement.

Here's what we ended up creating...

And here's how we got to the finished look...

We met with our customer to determine what they were wanting and what the look and functionality needed to look like. After our consultation, I drew up a couple possible solutions and this is the idea that they picked! I'm not the best illustrator, but you get the idea...

The base of this idea was to repurpose an old dresser as the main structure and then build a shelving unit to attach to the top. You can imagine how excited I was when the customer said they were all for repurposing an old dresser into the new merchandise rack! It makes me so happy to see that people are open to reusing old pieces and give them a second life.

So into the shop we went to start retrofitting the dresser and fabricating the new shelves. First we removed the two larger drawers and painted the void black. Then we cut some salvaged wire mesh to size and fastened it to the shelves. It's sorta hard to see on this picture but we reinforced the bottom of the dresser with a metal frame and then attached the four casters.

Here is a close up of the wire mesh. It has a super cool industrial feel and was going to be perfect to line the shelves and use as the walls for the top structure. Our customer suggested we use different size mesh because 'they didn't like things to matchy matchy' and I couldn't have agreed more. The different mesh is far more interesting to look at!

We used a combination of angle iron, square tube and the salvaged mesh to create the framework for the top hutch. We had a couple pieces of fabulous reclaimed roof boards from a local barn that we used for the shelves. Just love how the reclaimed wood balances out so well with the metal!

I painted the exterior of the dresser a dark grey, and lightly sanded the edges so that it looked used and comfortable.

Two last things we needed to figure out before this was complete were the handles and what we would use for the top of the dresser so that it was SUPER durable and would withstand whatever was thrown at it!

For the industrial drawer pulls we used some cool pipe and elbow fittings...I absolutely love how they turned out!

Now to the top. We were struggling with what to use...paint was just not going to cut it and we knew that...but what would be appropriate, offer the smooth surface we needed and still be durable enough? Metal, of course. So we got some sheet metal and had it cut to fit like a glove!