Repurpose An Old Grill Into A Garden Storage Cart

We have been spending all kinds of time in the garden the last couple of weeks.  This will be our 4th growing season, and things are getting serious, so I decided it was time to have a decent place to store our garden tools near the garden.  In past years we hauled everything out from the barn each and every time we were going to do some gardening, and things often got left out, or misplaced.  After noticing our old non-working grill was hanging out in the barn for two – too many year I decided to make it into a useful way to store, move, and organize our garden tools right out in the garden.  It is the perfect moveable potting and planting cart – with lots of great places to hang and store tools.  The old grill is now a new garden storage solution that works just right!

 

So you know how that is when you have something like a grill die on you.  You have all the good intentions of getting a couple parts to fix it up, and two year later the thing still sits untouched.  Well that was the situation here with my grill to garden cart transformation.  We have replaced it with a new grill, and rather than throw away the old grill I decided to make it into soething that could be really useful for our garden.

We have been gardening as a family for a few years now and wasting lots of time hauling stuff back and forth from the garage and barn, and often scattering and losing garden tools in the process.  The kids are good little gardeners, but they often help me lose things I need out in the garden.  I have all of the fancy dreams of a beautiful shabby chic garden shed, you know, the ones out of Better Homes and Gardens Magazine with the rustic elegance of old farmhouse sinks and reclaimed barn wood floors, but it is just not happening anytime this century.

So instead, I figured I could solve my problem with something I already had and wasn’t using anymore, and that just happened to be our old broken grill.

It is certainly not a Fancy garden shed, but it is working marvelously for us out in the garden and all it took was a little elbow grease and some cans of spray paint!  Literally all I did was clean and dry the entire grill and then spray it with 2 coats of a good yellow spray paint.  I used 3 cans to cover the outside of the grill (including the back).

**  Be sure if you are going to spray paint a grill that you ARE POSITIVE that all of the gas lines are cleared, that there is NO tank even attached to it, and that everything is unhooked, not working, and that there is NO chance that it will ignite a flame!  Be smart here!*

And we are now happy to be using our new garden storage cart each and every day as we tend to our garden!

I removed all of the knobs and dials from the front of the grill – and what was left over made the perfect hangers for the kids little tools!

When opened the grill makes a perfect little potting table.  Lots of space for plants, seeds, pots, gloves, and tools.

Even the kids love putting things back where they belong inside the new garden storage cart!  Now we have a place everything, and everything can be put back in it’s place!  No more loosing tools in the barn and no more hauling them back and forth to the garden!

When we are done out in the garden for the night we put everything inside the grill, close the cover, and everything is protected from the elements, and safely stored away for the next time.

The grill really lent a ton of great storage solutions for out stuff.  The side handle is perfect to prop hoes and rakes in so they don’t tip over and fall.  The hooks meant for cooking utensils now hold our garden hand tools.  The knob holders work for the kids to hang their plastic tools on and the actual grill hold everything from garden labels, lists of what is plated where, gloves, extra seeds, sunscreen and bug spray, scissors, string, tools, hose nozzles, pots and more!  The back of the grill even lends a place to keep a bucket for garbage and waste to get thrown, and a place to keep even more supplies like bags of potting soil, or weed killers.

I have even agreed to let the kids decorate the garden cart throughout the summer!  There are a few sharpie markers stored inside, and when the kids need a break from the garden work, they can grab a marker and color away on the storage cart!  By the end of the summer I think our cart will look very different and I’m sure the kids will be very proud of it!

The old grill is back in action, it just has a slightly different job now.  I am so happy to have a place to store things out in the garden that is functional and fun too!  Amazing what a few cans of spray paint can do!