How to Build a BBQ Cart

this is stuart stewart likes barbecues in fact he's just bought a new one from the internet just a small one but big enough for him and his family it appears though he didn't understand exactly what he was buying stewart feels a bit of a plonker but wait he seems to be having an idea it looks like he's thinking about building a versatile garden trolley with removable panels that can house various inserts including a concrete slab for the barbecue to sit in probably shall we watch while stewart tries to redeem himself [Music] so to make this dinky little barbecue into something that i can actually use i'm going to be building a trolley or a cart for it to sit in and that will not only bring out to a nice height for be able to barbecue but will also give me some work surface which is always handy when you're cooking or having a barbecue but i don't want just a barbecue cart i haven't got the space for that i want it to be used let's say as a drinks trolley for when i'm not having a barbecue but having drinks outside or maybe as a work surface when i'm potting plants in the garden or 101 other things i haven't even thought about yet so i've come up with a design which i think will give me all of those things and makes a trolley in the garden really versatile in fact i call it the thunderbird 2 of barbecue carts so starting with this by two if we just look here in plan and that means from above this frame will have three cross members which will essentially give me two 600 by 600 voids now in one of these voids i'm going to be making a concrete slab with a hole in the middle for the barbecue to sit in and with the other void i'll make an insert out of decking material that will act as a work surface at each end of the frame i'll also have some circular handles which will help me move this about in the garden looking at the side view i'm going to have four standard legs made out of three by three fencing posts that planes down to 70 by 70 and at the bottom i'll form a shelf with some slats just for storage but the great thing about this design is that these inserts i can easily take in and out so if i don't want the barbecue to be there i can take out the concrete insert and replace it with a work surface insert or if i don't want a work surface insert i can take it out and replace it with like an ice bucket insert for drinks say or anything else i make in the next coming years and this is where this design is really versatile so on with the build i'm going to start with the concrete that the barbecue sits in and i started that a couple of days ago on this very bench i started by making a mold for the concrete out of melamine with sides tall enough to be able to cast 50 mil thick concrete to see this whole process in more detail please see my concrete top garden table video to create a hole in the middle of this slab that the bbq will sit in i glued two 25 mil thick slabs of foam together to make a 50 mil thick void former which will keep the concrete away from the center the glue has sort of stuck this foam it's not perfect but it probably lasts long enough for what i want it for so this void format that's going to form the hole in the concrete that the bbq sits in i don't want to have vertical sides i want the sides to be beveled to match this sort of angle of the side of the barbecue so it's got somewhere to sit nicely in so i've just set this up to work out that angle this is going to be the top level of concrete and with my angle measuring device thingy although this has got a radius i've worked out that an angle of around about that is quite a nice fit so i've used that angle on a bit of an off cut just to try if you can imagine now this is the concrete top and this is how the concrete and the bbq interface is going to look so i think i'm happy with that angle and how that looks now between the barbecue and the concrete there's obviously going to be heat transfer which isn't a problem because it's obviously concrete but what it does mean if i don't do anything about it is this barbecue is going to be resting on solid concrete and it'll probably only rest in three places and gradually that will scratch this enamel and that's not very good for the barbecue so what i've done is i've bought some stove rope or fire rope as sometimes it's called and this is a heat resistant rope that they use in fireplaces and chimneys to seal gaps and i'm going to put a layer of that between the concrete and the barbecue all the way around the perimeter for the barbecue to sit on because it's nice and cushioned and it won't scratch now this is about 10 or 12 mil thick but it's easily compressed down to about five so when i work out the radius for this void former i have to add another five mil around for this rope so that's what i'm going to do now i'm going to cut out the foam for this void former and put the bevel on it and i think i'm going to do that on the bandsaw i transferred the angle i chose from the barbecue to the bandsaw by tilting the bed and then roughly marked and trimmed the phone by eye to remove as much waste as possible before screwing it down in the middle to cut the exact radius [Music] [Applause] [Music] so as i said earlier if you want to see this whole process in a little bit more detail go and have a look at my concrete top garden table video where i run through everything in a lot more detail so i've got my void form i've got a nice bevel on the top surface i'm going to glue this in my mould seal around the outside and then i'll be ready for some concrete using a caulking gun and silicon sealer i made a rounded over bead around the inside of the mold and then stuck down the void former in the center [Music] i marked a horizontal ring around the void former as a guide for some fixings for the fire rope that i'll be putting in later once the silicone had set i removed the excess with a narrow scraper and also sealed around the central void former [Music] being a civil engineer i never feel comfortable about casting concrete without containing reinforcement so i hand bend a length of 10 millimeter high tensile rebar to essentially form a ring around the slab just to give the thinner areas some additional strength then it's a quick clean with white spirit before applying a liberal coat of mineral oil or butcher's block oil to all surfaces which i must say does a really good job of debonding the concrete from the mould from the internet i bought some old-fashioned long wall plugs which i haven't seen for years now but are still made i cut these down to around 50 millimeters and stuck them in the void former along the line that i marked earlier the part sticking out will get cast into the concrete and will give me a ready-made fixing for the fire rope without the need to drill the concrete after casting [Music] adding my black dye to the water i could then add this to my three to one concrete mix and start filling the mold [Music] before vibrating it to remove any trapped air pockets i like to help get it into all the corners by hand making sure i'm wearing gloves [Music] around halfway i insert the rebar ring into the concrete and then fill up to the top making sure i've vibrated the mold until there's no more bubbles rising to the surface so that's the top port but i must say that black dye that i put in the concrete gets absolutely everywhere and it stains anything it touches like your hands and the floor your clothes and everything else at the same time i'm glad i put it in because i don't really like seeing bare concrete color in the garden anyway so i want something a little bit darker so i'm going to leave that for an hour or so until it gets the initial set and then i'll cover it with polythene and a bit of thermal blanket to keep it moist and warm over the next few days in two or three days time i'll take the sides off and in about seven days time it's going to have enough strength to be able to take it out of this mold while the concrete was curing i turned my attention to making the timber trolley so i first cut the two main long members to length [Applause] for the cross members it's important that they're all cut square and they're all exactly the same length so i trimmed the ends and set up a makeshift stop block that i'm sure steve ramsey would despair of but it worked anyway [Applause] i then got on with setting out all the connections and fixings on the main two members my two main longitudinal beams are now cut and i've just been marking out the fixing positions on one of the corners here i've made sure that these fixings are evenly spaced and they look fairly tidy so with a bit of cardboard now i can turn this into a template transfer it onto the template and that means that each corner the fixings are going to look exactly the same so on this i'm using 100mm long waferhead timber screws they're coated and they're corrosion resistant so they're okay out in the open they've actually got tx30 head on them which is a star type bit which i'm sure i've got in the collection but i don't have to go and find it because this one comes free with the screws in the box i cut a very simple 45 degree miter to the ends of the long beams just to round them off really and in the centre of this mitre thing at the end i use a forstner bit to drill around halfway through the timber to accept the barbecue handle or broom handle to be exact i gave all the edges on these ends a quick round over with a basic block and sand paper and i was ready for glue up although all these connections are end grain on one side i still gave them a liberal dose of exterior glue just as a bit of belt and braces although i'm really impressed with these hundred mil fixings i bought which worked really well with the tx bit supplied i use the same length cross member timber as a spacer so i was guaranteed to get a square or at least a parallelogram if you don't check it with a square i cut the three by three posts to form the legs and sealed all the cut ends with sealer i decided to install the 75 millimeter casters before fixing the legs to the frame which did make it easier flipping the frame upside down and using a 50 millimeter spacer meant that i could sit the leg at the correct position and height on the inside of the frame before gluing and screwing them in ensuring throughout that they're square to the frame in each direction [Music] the bottom cross supports are also easier to install at this point at eye level rather than leaving it later and doing it at ankle level as long as you still have juice in your battery but it's always a relief when you realize you've got a spare one fully charged it's this sort of occasion where my retractable casters on my workbench come in handy especially when i don't even need to bend down to use them a quick sand and a covering of stain brings all the treated timber a lot closer in color this basic trolley can be used in a variety of ways as well as a barbecue and drinks trolley as you'll see later it's really easy to pop an mdf top onto it with some battens underneath just to stop it moving around and to use it as a general work surface in the garden with the installation of the bottom slats and applying the stain the cart is essentially complete so i'm turning my attention to just finishing off these inserts and i'm making them out of standard deck board where you can get these at any diy shop i've already cut these to length and in a couple of these inserts i'm going to make an opening so i can hang these ikea type boxes that everyone seems to have at home for storage and toys and what have you and i've got a deeper one that i intend to use as an ice bucket as well so once i've got this complete i can take the concrete out the mould and we should almost be ready for a barbecue [Music] oh no i didn't even care enough to be dismissed [Music] i just kept keeping off in my stride [Music] just goes to show it ain't over for us to come around better late than never [Music] perfectly [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the bbq is heating up and we should be ready to start cooking very soon this is probably my favorite configuration where you've got the barbecue and the ice bucket the storage underneath so i hope you've enjoyed this video if you have please check out the other ones on my channel and please subscribe so i think it's time for well-earned beer [Applause] [Music] baby for you and me

Channel: Proper DIY

Views: 323,406

Keywords: Garden cart, drinks trolley, outside entertainment, bbq cart build, BBQ cart, grill cart, weber kettle, how to build a bbq cart, diy grilling table, pimp my grill, diy bbq cart, weber kettle grill

Id: 18BDXNooE-Q

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021