Over the years, I have bought and sold more antique “shoe carts” than I can properly remember.  These antique shelves on wheels are called shoe carts because they were often used in shoe factories to transport shoes around the factory.  I have found carts that are all different shapes and sizes and made in different styles.  Some have spindles making the “shelves” instead of a board (like the first shelf.)  I always preferred the ones that had solid shelves (or could be adapted with boards) so they were more versatile.  I’ve mostly used these antique shoe carts for retail display or storage in my old studio in PA, but I did use one or two in my home over the years in my kitchen and home office.

When I was an antique dealer, I bought and sold a lot of ironstone, so these carts were fantastic for displaying stacks of plates and bowls.

I also used them for displaying products from the MMS Milk Paint line.  (Do you see how we painted each label in the corresponding paint color?  I always loved putting together little details like that when I styled retail spaces.)

But, this antique shoe cart was one of my favorite finds.  Someone had removed the tilted racks which made the piece a little too shoe-specific and replaced them with custom-cut boards painted to match the old cream paint.  The fact that the shelves could be removed made the piece that much more versatile.  Not only could you put the shelves where you wanted them, but you could remove them entirely making the piece lightweight and easy to move.  As someone who moved a lot of furniture, I appreciated those qualities!

Despite this being the perfect piece to hold onto, I sold it.  If you followed me during my antique dealer years, you know that I would sell pretty much anything.  I kept a few of my very favorite pieces, but I always reminded myself that I bought pieces to sell.  I might want to hang onto them for a while, style and photograph them, love on them, and then send them along to a new home.

There were times I regretted selling such a versatile piece until I received an e-mail from a woodworking blogger, Jaime of That’s My Letter.  She asked if I could help her with approximate measurements, so she could make plans and build a reproduction of the shoe cart I sold!  It was a welcome e-mail because I had been considering having Jeff build me something similar as a replacement.

Here is the antique shoe cart reproduction she came up with…

You can find the free plans for the reproduction shoe cart HERE.

It worked out great for me because I was able to hand Jeff some details woodworking plans instead of my usual pencil sketch.  So, one afternoon, Jeff (assisted by a friend) built two of them for me.  They were painted in two coats of .  That color is currently out of stock on , but would be a nice substitute.  Since milk paint is so fantastic on raw wood, I didn’t apply a finish.  Milk paint will have a very matte finish if left raw, so you can add a wax, hemp oil, or clear top coat.

If you haven’t used Milk Paint before, you can find writing and video tutorials on painting and finishing with MMS Milk Paint products HERE.

The inspiration antique shoe cart was made with mortise and tenon joinery, which would’ve been time-consuming to make, so the reproduction version is constructed with pocket holes and screws using a Kreg Pockethold Jig.  is the jig system we have, but is a simplified and much less expensive Kreg Jig if you only do projects here and there.  Jeff was able to build two of them in just a few hours, but it helped that he had a friend to help as well as a nice woodworking shop set-up.

Here is a closer look at the pocket hole construction.  Kreg does have wood plugs to fill the holes, but I wasn’t too worried about hiding the holes for this specific project.

To make our reproduction cart mobile, we added that work with the industrial feel of the design.

Ober the years, these carts got heavy use for storage in the studio and to be used for retail display at antique markets…

If you’d like to find an antique shoe cart instead of building a reproduction, you can often find them at antique markets and on , , and Facebook Marketplace.

You can find more woodworking tutorials and projects HERE.