Vintage cart makeover

I am a sucker for old furniture and vintage pieces.  I love going to an antique mall or flea market and finding an amazing piece that can be used for something other than it's intended purpose.  Most of the time I have to have something in mind before I am going to just go out and buy an old piece.  Before Covid struck, my husband and I had been talking about purchasing a cart to store liquor on.  We looked and looked, but nothing really tickled our fancy, plus we wanted something that would look great in our kitchen with our vintage table.  

We were so excited when North Carolina began letting small businesses open.  After watching Facebook for weeks, the antique mall that we wanted to check out was finally open.  To limit our exposure to others, we went right when they opened and wore our masks.  This particular antique mall is huge! It takes hours to get through and has just about everything an antique lover would want.  After spending an hour searching for a piece that would work, we found it, tucked under a bunch of knick knacks.  We looked around a little longer, but went back for the cart that would become our liquor cart.  

We got it home, looked it over, and began the stripping process.  I honestly don't understand why people paint beautiful pieces instead of just cleaning them up to their original glory.  As they say though, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.  I always get really excited when I begin these projects.  I can see what I want even through all of the layers of paint.  Here is the cart at the beginning of it's transformation.

Pretty ugly isn't it?  After hours and hours of using paint stripper, the red paint still wasn't coming up.  We had to break out the grinder to get off the stubborn red paint that did not want to be stripped off.  We used chrome polish and a lot of elbow grease.  After about three days of working on this red painted, vintage cart, the finished product in my opinion is beautiful!  It looks amazing in our kitchen, and does a great job accenting my grandma's table.  I may not always like doing the work, but I always love the end product.