New Life for Old Furniture
By Renee Houston Zemanski
Making environmentally sound choices in everything we do is important. There are many ways to participate in the effort, ranging from small gestures, like recycling your newspapers, to grand gestures, like investing in a hybrid car. What we do with our old furniture can also make a difference.
Quality antiques and vintage pieces are extremely trendy in modern decor and highly sought after, too. Why invest in an inferior reproduction of an antique armoire when the designer’s original is gathering dust in the back room of the consignment shop down the street? Or maybe your family’s lovely heirloom pieces were banished to your basement years ago. By refurbishing these diamonds in the rough you are also helping the environment by reducing waste. (And no landfill deserves a Henry II French armoire.)
Refurbish, Repurpose, Recycle
“A lot of times furniture can be neglected, but it usually can be rejuvenated,” says Kathy Peterson, a celebrity design expert, author, and national TV host. “There’s no reason to dispose of it—it can fill up the landfills. Plus, your home can actually be homier with an eclectic collection of furniture that has personality. If you can take a variety of different found objects and furniture, you can create a very clever and eclectic look for yourself instead of buying something off of a showroom floor. These pieces will reflect your style.”
Older pieces of furniture may also be repurposed. Use your imagination. Repurposing furniture is as easy as taking the front panel of a broken drawer and screwing some hooks on it to make a coat rack. Or even simpler: grab a small night table and use it as a side table in your family room.
That strong, oak kitchen table with the stylish legs and smooth, broad top could make an excellent desk. It’s fun to create new things out of old and you really don’t have to be all that creative—often a little paint is all you need to turn something into a stunning new piece.
Another very basic idea is to take your average kitchen table, cut some length from its legs, and make a hip, new coffee table. If you are up to something a little more complex, cut the legs off a buffet or a side table, upholster the top, and make it into a bench. Benches can also be made from old headboards and footboards. “When you look at furniture, remember it doesn’t have to be in mint condition because you can use it for other things,” says Ki Nassauer, author and cofounder of JUNKMARKET, a business that specializes in reusing furniture. “You can use furniture legs for candle bases, tray bases, or a lot of things.”
An alternative way to reuse furniture is to move it from room to room. Maybe you have a piece in a bedroom that isn’t functional and you take it out and use it in the living room or foyer.
Mix It Up
By refurbishing or repurposing furniture you already have, or shopping for antique and vintage pieces, you can create a fresh, eclectic look in your home. By incorporating older pieces that you like into your existing decor you create a stamp of your own style—one that refuses to conform to cookie-cutter catalogue trends. Depending on your choices of furniture and how you decide to use them in the room, the pieces can take on a contemporary, traditional, or urban feel.
When shopping for these unique pieces be sure that you are getting a product of good quality. Signs of quality wood pieces include thick pieces of wood all around (including the back of the piece), English dovetail joints at the fronts and backs of drawers, wood glides beneath drawers, and a wood (not cardboard!) dust divider between the levels of drawers.
When looking for good upholstered pieces, check for a well-constructed frame made of hardwood. Better quality furniture has coil springs, not zigzag ones. Goose down and goose- or duck-feather fillings are common in higher-end pieces but polyurethane filling is fine as well, and when wrapped in Dacron (the resulting material is called polydacron), it is even better. Finally, if the outside covering is made from a quality fabric it will be tightly woven. Regardless of what material the covering is made of (fabric, vinyl, leather), be sure to check it thoroughly on all sides for tears and snags. If you do find some but have already fallen for the piece you can always reupholster it.
One question remains—should you change a piece if you think it’s an antique? To set your mind at ease, check with a reliable antique appraiser, who can tell you whether it’s more valuable as is. If it is an antique, try restoring it with a gentle cleaning first—but be careful not to destroy the original finish. Of course, if the piece is damaged beyond repair feel free to sand, paint, embellish, etc.
Web exclusive: For some fun ideas on how to make new use of old household items visit our Web site at
www.WhatsUpMag.com.
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Where to Recycle Furniture (and Look for Recycled Furniture)
Many resources for acquiring and passing along used furniture are available. If family members or friends are looking to pass along a piece of furniture they no longer need, think about how you could recycle it. For unique finds visit thrift stores, garage sales, auctions, antique stores, and online groups and sites where items are sold or given away. Another place to find lots of interesting pieces that lend a more contemporary feel is a used restaurant supply store.
Listed below, along with other resources, are just a few of the local charity thrift stores; there are many others in the surrounding counties and in Baltimore City. There are also many consignment stores in the area that will pay you for your furniture if you don’t want to donate it.
The Arundel Habitat for Humanity ReStore
8101 Ft. Smallwood Rd., Pasadena
(410) 437-7755
www.arundelhabitat.org/restore
Partners In Care’s Upscale Resale Boutique
6 South Ritchie Hwy., Pasadena
(410) 544-0568
www.partnersincare.org
The Salvation Army
• (410) 421-5330 • 574 Ritchie Hwy., # C, Severna Park, MD
• (410) 766-4841 • 8005 Jumpers Hole Rd., Glen Burnie, MD
If you’d like to donate goods but can’t make it to a Salvation Army drop-off point, call (800) 958-7825 to schedule a home pickup.
Goodwill Industries
• (410) 269-1302 • 1605 West St., Annapolis, MD
• (410) 987-9740 • 674 Old Mill Rd., Millersville, MD
• (410) 255-2112 • 4115 Mountain Rd., Pasadena, MD
http://yellowpages.aol.com/business/goodwill-industries/severna-park/md/0,102412256/
Annapolis FreeCycle network: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/annapolis_freecycle
Craigslist:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites.html
Choose a city and select from the “free” or “furniture” categories.
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