Wednesday, September 20, 2006

WFMW: Making your own furniture dolly

The credit for this tip goes to my husband. He noticed workers in used furniture stores using these to move large items. I'm the benefit of his experiment; I've been singlehandedly moving chests and mattresses all morning. This type of flat dolly doesn't require the arm strength required to tip and push a two-wheeled version. My husband made it in less than fifteen minutes with scrap materials. It's simply two-by-fours cut and screwed together, with a set of cast-off castors screwed to the base. We stapled an old carpet remnant around the top for padding. Even if you bought the materials new, I doubt it would cost less than $10 to put together.
Check Rocks In My Dryer for more Works-For-Me-Wednesday tips!

Update: Thanks for your questions. The critical thing is not to make your furniture dolly too big to fit through a doorway! My husband says to take an 8-foot 2 x 4 (cost, about $2) and cut it into four 2-foot sections. The finished dolly will be 2 feet by two feet. Scavenge the casters if you can, as they are the most expensive part of the project. As for getting the furniture ON the dolly by yourself: I lifted one end of the chest and then pushed the dolly underneath it with my foot. Then I lowered my end back down and pushed the whole thing along. For larger pieces (like the roll top desk), I maneuvered the dolly underneath one end and then lifted the opposite end as I pushed. This makes the dolly work like a second person on the other end.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

How are you getting things on and off the dolly by yourself?

DonnaB said...

Pretty ingenious! Glad it's working for you!

Someone Beautiful said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Someone Beautiful said...

This is neat! I'm going to show this to my husband who likes to build things!

Annette said...

I like it! I'm sharing this with my hubbie and he'll cut the wood and I'll do the rest! Fun fun!! :)

Anonymous said...

Good luck with the move. It sounds like you have everything under control.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering like Jordana also was, how you load the things on and off of it alone.

Anonymous said...

Sorry I forgot to ask if you would give us the dementions as that size seems to work for you. Thanks again.