What do you do with your old furniture? Most people throw it away, but before doing it do you consider if it can have another use? For example, you have no longer need for a round table? What about for a half-table against the wall?
We usually re-purpose our old furniture. I have an old table in my apartment? I pass it to my parents to use as a garden table. Old cupboard? Great for storing tools in the garage. Or, if you have some money to spare, you can get that furniture to a carpenter for a quick conversion. For example, I've seen old tables turned into four legged chess boards. I think there's good money to be saved if you creatively reuse old furniture, yup
I tend to hold onto my furniture for a long time. When I do get new items, I do like to get quality ones that will stand the test of time and are more durable than fancy. By the time it comes for me to upgrade, the old piece is usually still in good shape but really is not worth a lot of money. I don't have a place for extra furniture do I donate it. One local charity has grown to like me not for the amount of material I send their way but for the quality of it. A lot of people donate furniture that is falling apart I think. If an item is damaged beyond repair - either seriously broken or too costly to fix, I will toss it.
I have a semi-wooden furniture (a sofa set) that only needs re-varnishing and re-upholstery from time to time. It was handed down to me by my grandparents and it's already an antique. Just like @lostvalleyguy, I tend to hold on to my furniture for a long time. I'm not in the habit of throwing away things because I'm the sentimental type who gets attached to my stuff especially if it's wooden or wrought iron furniture and fixture. I may sell or give it as a gift but never discard it like a regular garbage.
Nicely put, that was exactly what I was talking about. Unfortunately I don't have much space for furniture because my place is small, but if I had a larger space I would surely be creative and do something like that.
I like to re-purpose furniture if possible or donate to the goodwill. Even if a piece is broken is still has value. There are people that look for broken pieces to fix or to use to fix another piece of furniture. I have heard of people that took two broken pieces of furniture and made a new piece of furniture.
That's nice from you Pat. I think that sometimes we just need to look a little further, even if something doesn't suit us for a reason it will suit someone. Sure, it's more convenient just to throw it away, but at the same time there are people in need looking exactly for what we are throwing away.
I'm not in charge of throwing out the furniture around here, but our old tables, chairs and sofas are just stuck in the backyard for like years already. The first time a furniture was placed there was last 2010 and now it's 2014, and the number of furniture have increased, and they all just sit there collecting dust.
Why are you collecting furniture in the back yard sidney? Are you planning on reusing it or you simply can't sell it? I have the baby beds from my kids kept away in my parent's storage place, but that is only because I didn't manage to sell them. I put a few ads online, but no one was interested, I guess I was asking too much money, but less than that would not make sense.
I don't think I've ever re-purposed furniture before, I usually try to sell it for cheap or if that fails, donate it to charity for someone who needs it. There is a cool anecdote in my family about re-purposing furniture though, apparently a great-uncle of mine who died before I was even born, once turned an old bookcase into a stool, which was a pretty terrible re-purpose
I don't see why Strykstar, maybe it was an exceptional stool? I think that any reconversion is a good thing because we use the furniture we are no longer needing and we give it a use, so it's a win either cases. Sure, your great-uncle could have made two stools, but something went wrong and he managed to do just one?
Not really sure because it was such a long time ago but I think my family has always made fun of that situation. Maybe the bookcase wasn't really unneeded and he just solved the stool problem without thinking of the no-bookcase consequences?
LOL, I don't know, you are just speculating now. I think that the one who puts his hands into the matter deserves credit, that's the way I see it. For example, we have a piece of furniture we no longer need, so we just put it at a corner? No, if we have the need for something else and we have the knowledge to reconvert it, that's the best way to follow I think.
It's definitely a good solution, especially since furniture are usually large items so putting them in a corner because they are going unused is taking up a lot of room that you could use for something you want. Not only is it a practical solution, it's also a lot more cost-effective as it's much cheaper than going out and buying the new furniture items that you need.
Personally, I prefer to get rid of old furniture when bringing in new. It is cleaner and better. Only one thing comes to mind when talking about reusing old furniture. A couple of years back, my wife didn't like the look of an old dresser, so I decided to update it with a bright color. I painted the old dresser with bright pinkish-red chalkboard paint for a playful look that works perfectly in my kid's room. It also had a fringe benefit. The dresser allows my kids to use their imaginations by drawing or writing anything they want on it, keeping the walls safe from any unexpected drawings.
We do reuse our furniture and as much as there something we could get from it, we don't throw it. We only throw one if it is already taking too much money to have it repaired or maintain than to buy a new more durable one.
I haven't reused much furniture though, just the beds from my kids that have passed from the older to the younger, but that required no alterations really. Once I did redo a storage space that was not optimized, I bought some boards and I made effective shelves that optimized the space, not exactly a re-use from furniture, but if I had some old furniture around I could have made the boards from there.
