Project Airplane Trolley

ScabbyLeg

I saw an airplane galley cart / trolley for sale in the back of an inflight magazine… the price was ridiculous but it sparked an idea. They are practical things with sturdy aluminium frames which would polish up well. It is hard to furnish an apartment these days without it looking like a page out of an IKEA magazine and I had been on the lookout for something different. And so I thought, an airplane trolley repurposed into a minibar would fit the bill nicely. It also seemed like a nice project that I could potentially work on inside a pretty small apartment in the city without too much mess. Since I had a look around for similar projects but didn’t find any, I figured I would post up a brief account of what I got up to myself.

A bit of internet research found various companies which sell exactly this type of thing but again the prices were exorbitant and the finished product often looked a bit more suited to an office or hipster’s loft rather than my living room.

I thought about it for a few months and in the end my inactivity paid off and my wife surprised me with this little gem here, which she found on eBay:



A well worn KLM trolley that I guess has seen 20+ years of service. I don’t exactly know the model of it but it’s an ATLAS half size trolley. The half size refers to it being half the depth of the “normal” size trolleys, which have doors on both ends. Space is at a premium in my house so the half size is perfect (and a bit more mobile).



The door opens fully back and “sticks” to the side of the trolley with a magnet in the frame. It has swivel wheels on the front and rear wheels with a pedal operated brake.

The frame is aluminium, painted with a glossy grey lacquer which had been dented and scuffed over the years. One of the sides has a nasty gouge that broke through the outer skin, but since the walls seem to be a aluminium-foam-aluminium type sandwich, everything on the inside was looking fine.

There seem to be a few variations on how these things look on the inside. This one is lined entirely with ridges for drawers, so plenty of flexibility for spacing things out later on.

smurfjed

How much did it cost you?

antoinolachtnai

Just one thing, make sure it doesn't fall over. It is narrow so it is basically unstable. The idea on the plane seems to be that you keep both hands on it whilst moving it in the galley at the back or front of the plane, and once you are in the aisle, it is between the seats, so it can't really fall over.

I have seen them keel over in the galley of the plane, when the attendant didn't hold on to it and was careless. It made a monstrous crash.

I would keep it away from children. If it falls on a child it could really hurt.

Putting some weight in the base might make increase the stability or it could make it worse.

If you exercise common sense it should be fine. But if you have kids I would have a little lock to secure it in its 'parking' position.

ScabbyLeg

No kids around to pull it over. Yeah, of course it's a risk but you have that with a bookshelf. Actually the trolley is pretty stable and sturdy - although it's built light weight, I think the older models are probably still reasonably weighty. The newer ones appear as though they have abandoned aluminium for some type of plastic.

I don't know exactly what it cost. I think around 120-150.

antoinolachtnai

The problem is when they load them up with duty free. I wouldn't imagine you'll put anything very heavy in it though. It's more likely to tip than a bookcase 'cos a bookcase is always left against the wall.

ScabbyLeg

Cards on the table - I have most of the work done already But there's always room for tips and mods for later on!

So, here was the rough plan of action:

1. Sand back the aluminium frame and get rid of the bulk of the scratch and marks
2. Sort out the sides: I saw some online which had vinyl designs but the ended up looking very shiny and I decided, not really what I had in mind. So I figured I would repaint the KLM blue a darker colour.
3. Clean up the inside and fit a couple of shelves, one for glasses, one for standing bottles, a bottom section for keeping a few wine bottles lying down
4. Bask in the glory of a plan coming together

ScabbyLeg

Stage one!
Sanding, it turns out, is a pain in the hole. I figured a quick rub of a rough grit to get rid of the bulk of the imperfections, followed by a medium, followed by a fine grit would get be a mirror finish in no time. That’s not quite the way it went. I was getting places, but slowly. So I switched fairly early on from manual labour to power tool - a much better idea, but created a lot of mess.

This yoke - a multi sander - got me down to the aluminium beneath the paint reasonably quickly. What it doesn’t do it give anything close to a nice finish, so then it was time to go back to the block and the finer grits, which worked pretty well.



So here are the stages:








I experimented a bit with sanding with fine grit sandpapers (1000-1200), polishing with a polishing paste, and giving a good rub down with scotch-brite. I decided against polishing the entire thing… aside from the amount of work it was, it made small dents, nicks and imperfections etc. which I didn’t get rid of during sanding, really stand out. I was by no means going for perfection here (I gave up after the initial few hours of sanding) but I was hoping for it to look a bit smart. In the end I got a decent finish. A bit weary of sanding I decided that the remaining dings in the frame added character and no-one would notice the heavier ones left towards the bottom anyway.

jack of all

Nice score, I think it has lots of potential. Just a few suggestions- mask off the laminate with tape before any further sanding to protect the finish to the panels. I think hand sanding with wet and dry (silicon carbide) paper wrapped around a sanding block, in the long direction, would be sufficient. Finish off with Autosol.

ScabbyLeg

I masked off parts of it alright. I wasn't too worried since the plan was to re-paint or recover the sides anyway. The door handle on the front is a stainless steel plate which was masked off well.

I stuck with the finer grits but used the same technique you mentioned - wet and dry. This is morealess what I ended up with. In the cold light of day some areas look a little more uneven, but pretty adequate for my purpose. I guess the next time I can go with the silicon carbide

I think I took this photo before the final sanding polishings, though.

ScabbyLeg

Stage two!
I started considering the best way to paint the sides in order to give a nice matte finish. I had also seen coverings before, but plastic-y looking, glossy vinyl coverings which were probably tricky to apply at best. And then I had a lightbulb moment: leather! I went on to eBay and pretty much immediately found exactly what I was looking for: a roll of fake leather, deep red and nicely textured, sort of like the stuff Volkswagen dashboards are made of. I ordered a section of it, the smallest amount I could order - 1.0m x 1.40m (a quick calculation seemed to suggest that this would be enough to cover all four sides) for €7 plus shipping!



In reality, ordering this suff was one of the first things I did and when it arrived I still had a whole load of sanding ahead of me. Finally cutting it to shape was much trickier than I expected but still doable armed with the most basic of tools. A ruler, stanley and a scissors did the trick. Here's the first side sized up to see how it looks:

Buona Fortuna

Nice job.

Just clarify for my idle curiosity. Were you able to get the faux leather under the frame or is it cut in?

ScabbyLeg

Not under the frame unfortunately. The frame stands about 2mm out from the walls, so with the faux leather in place it is pretty much flush to the aluminium now.

Stovepipe

you should have a look for the matching trays by going to the aircraft catering firms directly, usually based at the airport or in the nearest industrial park to the airport. Look at Serviceair or Gate Gourmet. They usually have surplus Atlas trays/trolleys,etc.

ScabbyLeg

True. I saw drawers on eBay too but I decided it wasn't the look I was going for. Instead I thought it would be nicer to make it as "homely" as possible. I had a look for wooden drawers but I wasn't up for going to too much work to make them fit so I decided instead for a couple of shelves and maybe a wine rack in the base for a few bottles.

ScabbyLeg

Stage three

Glueing the faux leather was fairly straight forward. The fabric has a bit of give and so it was easy to stretch a small bit to line up flush with the frame. I used a standard multipurpose glue and held the leather in place, flush to the frame, with masking tape. In the end I was happy with how it turned out.



The interior didn’t receive much attention. A bit of a scrub with scotch-brite to remove general dirt and grime cleaned it up well enough. I removed the screws from the top of the trolley and managed to remove the top surface and the handle. This meant better access to give it a good clean and also to get a better sanding finish on the frame. The handle element got the finest sanding and treatment with the polishing paste to make it good n’ shiny.



I spend a bit of downtime during stage one looking on eBay, Amazon etc. trying to figure out how to kit out the inside of the trolley. I came across some nice ideas - again from the companies that sell these things professionally. Ideally I would have been able to make a few nice looking drawers but I’m hardly a carpenter so custom making anything to fit was beyond my abilities. In the end I settled for simple - a couple of shelves. By chance I found that IKEA sells chopping boards that are made from bamboo and have a nice finish. They are the perfect width, but I had to cut the length down to size. At €9 each they probably aren’t the cheapest solution. Still, handy to fit and nice to look at in the end.



By chance, IKEA sell cheapish plastic bin/ basin type things that are also an exact match to the inner dimensions of the trolley. If my mini-bar project went arse-ways in the end then my Plan B was to just fill it with these bins that slide out like drawers to store my tools.

Happyman42

All you need is one of these and your flying!

ScabbyLeg

Well here are a few more photos of the finished article (morealess).

Sliding shelves cut to size fit very well and look pretty good. I wanted ot use the free space in the base for stacking a few wine bottles (only really space for six) so I researched wooden racks that would fit and bought this from Amazon:



I had to chop it a bit but it was cheap and does the job.





A third "shelf" piece finishes off the top nicely and tones town the industrial feel a bit more.

So this is the finished product:





As with all projects there are a few more things to do:

The inside of the door is still KLM blue and fairly shabby looking having been partially sanded. I have some left over scraps of the red leather which I might just stick on… otherwise paint might be an easier way to go. The back wall is blue too..

A couple of lights on the inside might also be a nice touch...