It’s 2am and all I have in my stomach is a few fun sized Twix and a whole lot of vodka. That’s when I see it, as if it were meant to be, a five shelf rolling cart that would be perfect for my apartment. It’s adorable and without thinking twice (or thinking at all) I begin noisily rolling it along the sidewalk to my Brooklyn apartment. I wheel it into the living room and fall into a deep, drunken sleep.

Cut to: the next morning. I open my door to find the magical bar cart of the night before, only, yeah it’s not so magical.

It’s covered in dirt and dust and mystery things that I don’t like to think about. The wood is chipped on the edges, the black shelves aren’t smooth and are speckled with white paint, the siding is peeling. It’s a mess. I start to clean it and realize that even if I did get all the dirt off, It would never look classy.

Or would it? I’ve yet to meet a problem that Home Depot can’t fix. Time to start the renovation.

Step 1: Clean it More

I bared down and got this thing as clean as I possibly could. The white metal frame cleaned up pretty easily but the shelves were a lost cause. I’m lazy and didn’t want to spend my whole afternoon scraping mystery street dirt off of fake wood.

Step 2: Home Depot!

I went to the Home Depot and bought electrical tape and shiny silver Contact Paper. I picked silver because it matches everything and is going to look fucking fancy. I chose electrical tape because I didn’t want to use paint and I need electrical tape on hand for actual electrical tape reasons (it was also only $2).

Step 3: Cut and Apply Contact Paper

I cut the contact paper to the size of all the shelves, and making sure they were as clean as possible and dry, applied it. This took longer than expected and it definitely wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped, but the great thing about shiny paper is that the reflections hide a lot of the flaws.

Step 4: Cut and Apply Electrical Tape

Why electrical tape? It’s stretchy, lets you make mistakes, and is super smooth. I used this on the edges of the cart so that it had a nice clean finish.

Step 5: Style your Cart

Now it’s time to add the fun stuff. Add alcohol, glasses, flasks, an antique teapot, flowers, ice bucket, whatever you have that looks extremely classy. There’s no wrong way to do it, but try and leave a lot of negative space since this is open storage and everyone can see it.

Also, I added LED fairy lights, because I’m a Brooklyn hipster and I’m doing it right.

And that’s it!

Now go impress your friends with your fanciness and they will never be the wiser about your trashy 2am garbage cart. Now I just need more alcohol to fill this out.