Mobile Card Catalogue: Add Wheels!

Do you remember the freedom you felt when you first got behind the wheel of a car? I felt the same way when we added wheels onto my favourite storage piece. Now it’s a mobile card catalogue!

Once my craft room was filled up with stuff, I knew I wouldn’t have a single blank wall to photograph projects against. The card catalogue is way too heavy to move but attaching wheels gives me options I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Drive Responsibly!

Common sense prevails: you should know that wheels aren’t always a practical solution. For instance, if a piece doesn’t have evenly distributed weight I’d caution against it. I recently saw wheels added to an upcycled piano bar with disastrous effect on the TV show Good Bones. After attaching new wheels and trying to move it, the piano fell onto host Karen Laine (luckily she wasn’t seriously hurt). I think the wheels may have been too big; they weren’t low enough to the ground to distribute the weight properly. I guess they should have used similar wheels to what was originally there. You can see for yourself the disaster in action starting at 27:47 in this video.

I’m not trying to turn you off of wheels but if you want to try this, use good judgement and proceed with caution after they’re installed! If you have kids, purchase wheels that have a locking feature so they’re not tempted to ‘play’ with the furniture. Or just skip wheels all together. Better to be safe than sorry 🙂

Back to our card catalogue. We removed all the drawers and lowered it onto the floor so the bottom was accessible. Hubs left a piece of wood underneath (left side of picture) so he wouldn’t squish his hands while lowering it! This also helps when lifting it back up again.

Challenges

Our card catalogue has a skirt around the bottom so we had to consider the extra depth to make wheels work – and touch the floor! Not wanting to repeat the piano fiasco mentioned above, we cut wood blocks so the wheels wouldn’t stick out too far below the skirting.

Hubs pre-drilled holes in the four corners of the blocks. Below you see the heavy duty long screws and wheels we’re using.  

Ensure that the screws are long enough to span both the wood blocks and also grip into the bottom the card catalogue. But not so long that the screws come through the bottom drawer cavity!

Install

Here’s the first two wheels attached:

The bottom of the wheels are just proud of the skirt edge so they roll freely and prevent a tipping hazard.

You can watch the wheel installation in this quick video:

When all wheels were attached, we lifted it back up and tested it out before the drawers went back in. We conducted the same roll test after replacing the drawers and were good to go!

Now that it’s on wheels, I have options. Like moving it to vacuum up the dust bunnies every once in a while. Hubs will tell you that I’m not big on vacuuming but it could happen 😉.

Dust bunnies and I really don’t mix. That’s why I knit this ‘Achoo’ sweater 🙂

Pin Card Catalogue

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My card catalogue is the single best storage piece I own. It keeps all the small stuff organized and out of sight. I really don’t know what I’d do without it! Check out our other storage solutions for organizing the craft room.

4 thoughts on “Mobile Card Catalogue: Add Wheels!

    • I agree Kim! It was one of the last ones left from a university library downtown! There’s a story behind how I got it (I ended up with two different ones) but I’ll save that for another blog 🙂 I’m very lucky to have it!

  1. Love that card catalog and that “achoo” sweater 😀 Brilliant as always Sara

    • Thanks Michelle! I don’t know what I’d do without the card catalogue; it’s the best storage in my studio.

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