Upcycling old furniture is a way of reducing landfill waste while creating handcrafted new items for your own home and adding a personal touch.
If you find what you want and buy it, be sure to look it over carefully before you start working on it, so you know what it was like before you start and don’t end up with a mess.
Repurpose Old Furniture
Rather than cast aside furniture that no longer serves its purpose, or has become démodé, you should strive to upcycle it. This way, you will turn it into something useful and desirable, thus reusing what otherwise would have ended up in the dump. This will de-clutter your nest and, at the same time, make your personal style more recognisable.
You can absolutely repurpose old furniture. Use the wood from the old pieces to make picture frames or decorative shelves. Perhaps the best and simplest idea is to use an old door as a table for your coffee shop: just paint it, cover it with glass and add it to your decoration.
Another option is to give your used furniture to an affordable charity or thrift shop, which will sell it for good use and recycle it to loving homes. If not, level up by hiring a junk removal company that disposes of it in a green way, so old furniture won’t end up in landfills where they’ll emit toxins that can harm the environment.
Paint & Refinish
Refinishing old furniture can be a fun way to rejuvenate good pieces in your home, which is also less costly and less delayed than buying something completely new (I’m looking at you, bamboo furniture held up by a storm somewhere en route, only to die during transit). Many pieces need only refinishing instead of stripping, which can be toxic and time-consuming – so not only is it a safe, but it can reduce the amount of monthly prep work. Buying reclaimed pieces add depth and character to a new space while helping to calm the demand on materials still mined and transported for use.
Similarly, recycled glass counters and elements can also help to reduce your eco-footprint; this glass is made from the bottles and jars collected by recycling centres along with other construction materials, and melting it down into the final product.
Add Personal Touches
By adding furniture with a history to your home, you can give it a unique character. Most pieces of new furniture by comparison seem cold and generic, but upcycling old furniture is a brilliant way to bring something original into the picture.
Regardless of whether it’s giving a wooden chest a fresh coat of paint or transforming the design on an old picture frame, the options are endless for customisation and individualisation, to make it your own, whether through the choice of fabric or the details added, such as the luxury regality of adding a tufted back to two chairs, or cutting the foam and adhering your own rhinestones to an old stool.
Upcycling like this will bring you beauty and character in your home and is a conversation piece when family and friends visit. Find that old chair, stain it and paint it with Country Chic Paint, Chelmford Red or Hale Navy and they will become timeless pieces that will blend well in any and every room they may end up in.
Share Your Transformations
You can also make use of furniture past its usual life span for more stylish homes, while recycling wood products (floorings or furniture pieces) halts the need to mine new materials from the earth, and recycling metal products, such as steel, also cuts down the energy use and related emissions.
Furniture that might otherwise be an eyesore can be turned into an eye-catching conversation piece with some paint applied in a quick weekend DIY blitz – such as this dark teal cabinet by @kyleacivellodesign with gold pull hardware, and Cane Webbing Cove Trim webbing thrown in to elevate it all for a decidedly eclectic design moment.
What if I told you that you could turn those wooden crates into side tables or coffee tables that serve the same purpose? It’s such a great way to update a room, and these clever tutorials from Annie Sloan will show you how it’s done.
