From barbecue to wood cart

This old barbecue may have lost its flame, but thanks to an imaginative conversion by Halfmoon Lake cottagers John and Pat Strachan, it’s far from being on its last legs.

By Ray Ford

After it was smashed during a windstorm, their two-burner Fiesta barbecue was destined for the landfill. But “we needed something about that size to hold wood,” Pat says, “and the idea of turning it into a wood cart just came naturally.”

John began the recycling effort by removing the firebox and burner and unbolting the brackets that supported shelves on either side of the firebox. To strengthen the frame, he dropped the shelf brackets about half a metre lower on the legs, and refastened them, using the barbecue’s original hardware. As additional reinforcement, he bolted a piece cut from the leg of another old barbecue across the back.

For handles, John hacksawed the angled section of a couple of legs off a third derelict barbecue, and bolted them to the cart, carefully filing the sharp edges on the cut-off ends and pushing square plastic plugs into the open ends of the tubing. The original barbecue came with only two wheels, so John added two more (also taken from the third scrapped barbecue) for improved mobility. As a finishing touch, Pat applied glossy black paint.

Now the Strachans roll the cart across the cottage floor to the door, fill it up, and roll it back beside the stove. “I can put about 25 split pieces of firewood on it, most of them up to seven inches across,” John says. Its grilling days may be over, but when it’s time to stoke the flames at the Strachan camp north of Timmins, the old barbecue stand still plays a supporting role.

—Ray Ford

Photo courtesy of John and Pat Strachan

Published in the Summer 2009 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2009 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.