Deck cooler

Who wants a plain old igloo cooler sitting on your deck, when you can have this instead? Not me!

I have seen many cooler modifications on Pinterst and YouTube, and by far the best one I have seen is from beachbumlivin, his video is really good and well put together. I got the basic idea for construction  from his video. I used pallets for the insets, shelf, and top lid. The rest of the wood I picked up at our local re-purpose shop for a descent price,  the cooler I already had so the only cost was hinges, bottle opener, and plumbing supplies. This was a really fun project to build, I had fun playing with different staining techniques. I used shoe polish for a good portion of the pre-stain, adding the polish gives a very aged look once a normal wood stain is applied over the shoe polish. For the rest of the shades of wood stain, I just used what I had already in my personal stock. 

 

When I plumed in the faucet, I decided to run it directly through the frame of the box. This ensures some stability to the hook up. My biggest concern was the plumbing, the last thing I wanted was myself or a drunk friend slapping off the faucet, so the way I did it makes for a solid connection and eliminates my concern.  The panels I just cut different sized wood pieces to fit in a mosaic pattern and stained them in random ways, the same for the side and back panels.  

The lid fits down completely, so the cooler is water tight. Even though I made this with reclaimed wood, I feel that the panels give it a classy look that I was very pleased with.

I hope this project inspires you to spruce up a old cooler that I'm sure you have laying around. As always thanks for checking out the page and have fun creating.