Showing posts with label Repurposing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repurposing. Show all posts

Friday, June 8, 2007

Those Retired Aluminum Pots

Concerns about the safety of food cooked in aluminum pots hit the news a few years back and since then, they've been turning up in auctions and thrift shops in huge numbers.

I love the dull silver sheen of old aluminum. I think it looks quite pretty.

This pot was probably used as a rice steamer. It has a nice shape, isn't very big and, as an added bonus, it still has its lid (not always the case with cookware). So I'm thinking on a dresser, in a bedroom or hallway, to hold all those necessities you take with you when you leave the house - keys, coins, cell phone... Pop the lid on and it all looks tidy.

It could alse hold make-up on a bathroom counter, if you don't have a huge collection.

If it didn't have its lid, I might put it beside the kitchen sink to hold scrubbies. It makes a change from those wide-mouthed ceramic frogs.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Almost-Instant Shelving

I love carpenter's carryalls, and snap them up whenever I find them.

I think they help me feel connected to my Grandfather, a man I never met, but who sounds like someone I would have liked to have known. I attribute my love of re-use to him. He was a very handy guy. His carryall is one of my treasured possessions. I use it to hold our flatware.

I found this lovely green one at the auction many years ago. For a long time, it held my art supplies. When we did over the kitchen earlier this year, the art supplies moved to a cupboard and I hung the carryall on the wall. As easy as that, we had two extra shelves and a hanging rod.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Found Treasures


Whenever my husband and I move into a new place (and we move a lot), I'm always eager to see what the previous owners have left behind. There are always a few cans of paint, at least. The oil-based stuff gets sent off to the hazardous waste recycling depot. I keep the latex paint and mix up batches to use in any redecorating that needs doing.


The other stuff can be really amazing - old furniture, sinks...


We're currently living in a commercial building, so the haul this time was better than usual. There was a triple sink that went into my husband's bakery, and some store fixtures, including this wire rack. It served for a time as a bookcase (slightly wobbly). When we re-did our kitchen, I moved it in there to store my mixing/serving/pudding bowls. I find I use them much more when they're out in the open, and having this display rack certainly helps to keep them tidy.


There are treasures all around. Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing where to look.


What's in your basement?

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Something Pretty


Sometimes buying second-hand takes a lot of thought and imagination and sometimes the items seem to jump into your arms.


I found these old sap buckets at the auction, five of them, all stacked together. I loved the contrast of the rust against the soft blue of the paint. The price was right, so I scooped them up, hoping I'd be able to get them unstacked once I brought them home.


It took two of us, but we managed to get them apart.


At that point, I just thought they were pretty and would have been happy hanging them on a wall as an art piece. The fact that they're water-tight expanded the possibilities enormously. Now they can hold big bunches of cut flowers or be pressed into dinner service as ice buckets.


Pretty and useful - my favourite combination for "stuff"!

Monday, May 28, 2007

A Walk On The Beach

It is in my makeup to need to wiggle my toes in sand at least once per summer. I feel that if I don't have the opportunity to do that, I start to lose something vital.

Life being what it is, the chance to visit the beach doesn't always coincide with my need of it, so whenever I do manage a trip, I will bring home plenty of photos and a souvenir or two (I try to restrain myself - beach ecology is important and many insects, birds and other small creatures rely on what's there for shelter. A thoughtful sharing is all right, but strip-mining is out).

So now in my house, I have a beautiful rock as a doorstop. A piece of driftwood holds up the office window in summer and hook on the back of the bedroom door reminds me that, though I may not be able to get to it, the beach is still there, waiting for my return.

I think I'm not alone in this longing. I see beach stones in home and garden shops, some with words engraved on them like "relax" and "serene". I find these awful, and not just because of the bossy intent. I think it's the juxtaposition of the natural stone, with all its random beauty and the precise, machine-driven engraving.

I mean, I do have stones with words on them. I use them as bookends and I've hand-lettered them with the genre of books they're holding up (in the vain hope of bringing some kind of order to my ever-expanding library). But to my eye, anyway, it fits. Even my neatest printing tends toward randomness and so doesn't jar with the naturalness of the stone.

Friday, May 25, 2007

An Easy Repurpose


Sometimes repurposing is as easy as bending wire...
I found this gorgeous fryer basket in my travels. No longer useful in its intended purpose (I mean, I'm sure it still works, but there aren't a lot of people deep-frying these days!), I wanted to give it a new life.
The handle is really long and would get in the way if it stayed horizontal, so I gave it a little push and it bent. Another careful push (I didn't want to break it) and I had a nice hanging basket, great for holding fruit (a nice way to make up for all that fried food), or toiletries in the bathroom, or stray office supplies, or a fat pillar candle, or a pot of ivy, or....

So many uses, I almost don't want to sell it!


Thursday, May 24, 2007

Be Kind to the Widows and Orphans

They come into this world as part of a set - salt and pepper shakers, pots with lids, a full complement of dishes.

But then life steps in. Lids break. Someone wanders off. The dish runs away with the spoon.

What to do with the left-behind? They're perfectly fine. They're still willing to work. They just can't be what they started out as.

But with a little imagination, the lid-less salt shaker becomes a tiny vase for a single blossom. The teacup sans saucer doubles as a tea light holder. And the old pot with the broken lid spends its retirement holding a plant, protecting your end table from overflow.

Nothing is actually useless. Sometimes it just needs a different use.


Wednesday, May 23, 2007

After Retirement

What happens when the old fridge retires?

You end up with bits and pieces left over - the shelves, the drawers, other bits that the recyclers don't want.

In other words, you've got yourself the makings of a dandy towel rack or front hall stand. Maybe even a pot/utensil rack in the kitchen, if you use really strong screws to hold it to the wall.