I found a couple of very poor photos. You can see the chifferobe in the left side of this pic. It was big and heavy, with tall cabinets for hanging clothes on each side; drawers in the middle and "gingerbread" carvings on the top (that got cut off in this photo.) There was also a "desk" type fold-down in the area under the glass door. The table was also a throw-away that I painted to match all the white baby furnishings.
Nice!!! That's beautiful you could have made a career in repurposing furniture. I'm one of those that hates to throw anything away I like fiddling with it try to make something else out of it.
Hah... in those days, I was just "poor." I don't really have any talent, but necessity is the mother of invention!! It still chaps me to remember that old lady "Mrs. Campbell", giving me that when it was junk, then repossessing it when she saw how it looked when redone.
Well, I am on the process of turning an old wood bookcase into a fireplace mantel....photo is comining soon.
In our neck of the woods, there’s always something to snag along the side of the road especially toward the end of the month when people are prone to moving out. Around that time, I always make it a point to take daily trips around a 3 block area just to see what I can find and to tell the truth, I have to stop! Just like the weird screw, bolt, spring or gadget that I think I might use later on [and don’t], the shop is stuffed with everything from solid wood head and footboards to lamps, electronics and …..stuff. To make matters worse, over the past 8 years I have had 4 tenants who left everything behind and I’m not talking about milk crate shelves and such. I’m talking about flat screen TV’s, over-stuffed couches, tools, aquariums, lawnmowers, stereos, dressers and closets filled with shoes, boots, clothing etc. One doper left behind a couple of stacked Craftsman tool boxes, 2 compressors, tool organizers, a huge flat screen and the list goes on to the tune of 7-8K worth which is strange because I have never met a hard-line doper who had anything. Yup, I think my days of snagging stuff is about over. As it is, I’m finishing the China cabinet (DIY thread) and then I’ll either try to find homes for some of the stuff I have and/or do something with them when I’m feeling particularly “artsy”.
The things I was given or salvaged out of the trash that I restored or repurposed are many and most were what I had for furniture and later kitchen appliances in my younger adult days since I was financially deprived and on my own. I salvaged all my toilet paper for several years from a dumpster where the damaged from smashing flat packages in transit, was discarded. One of my best accomplishments was salvaging board ends from a mill that most picked up for firewood and using them for making my cabinets. I built these entirely from these board ends and it was all done with hand tools including the dovetailed drawers, tendon and mortise frames, etc. Hand saws, planes, and chisels powered by estrogen-fueled arms got the job done. About 10 years ago I was given some discarded wood since it had some warp and the furniture maker couldn't use it and it was bound for the chipper to be used as smoking wood. I made this guitar using all hand tools since I had sold my table saw and power sanders. I hand planed until I was sick of it, but I got it down to the thickness needed. I hand-made the pegs cutting them out with a coping saw and then rounding and tapering with a rasp. Even the bone for the nut and bridge was sawn and rasped from an old bone I found buried deep in my yard several years previous. The frets and strings were all that were purchased new. This is before I put on the French polish finish. Over 100 micro-fine coats were hand rubbed on. I no longer have the patience for such a project. Now for me, DIY stands for Done It Yesterday.
Faye, you should get satisfaction out of the things you made, they're great. My younger days I enjoyed dumpster diving. While I didn't always make things out of them like you did, I found purposes for them. I work next to a high-end pool table manufacturer. The table was made from milled slate, if it's got a chip or a small crack they tossed these big slate pieces. With the help of a friend I loaded one of these slate throwaways into my station wagon I leveled the ground and placed the slate on top and used it for under my garbage cans. They also tossed routed wood cutoffs which I use to make strip heaters, which are used for bending lucite, & Plastics.
I well remember the early morning trips to the local sawmill with my kids and loading up the back of our pickup truck with those little mill ends , so we could burn them in the barrel stove and keep our little house warm. The longer pieces could be used for other things, and I am sure that you had to hunt through what you collected to find pieces that would work for the cabinets, @Faye Fox . Those are absolutely BEAUTIFUL cabinets, and having to piece them together with mill ends was a lot of work just in itself.
Thanks, Yvonne. I probably picked up 100 pieces that fueled the wood cookstove for every longer piece. Some days they would dump all 8 foot pieces that had flaws. I selected and saved the best of them and could get nice lengths up to three feet. One fall I made very small wooden wagons (about 50) using these scraps and sawed the wheels using a 2" hole saw on my big hand crank drill press and used braided bailing twine for making the pull cords. I gave them away at Christmas to preschool kids that appreciated them.
One of the mills in Idaho was a cedar mill, and they always squared off the wood and there were lots of the outside pieces that we could pick up. We brought them home in the back of my pickup and Bobby put them up on the side of my barn, which was just a roof and poles and no sides. Once he put on the cedar trimmings, it made the pole barn look like it was made out of logs, as well as made it a lot warmer for the livestock and other items we had stored in there.
When I worked in electronics they would toss these huge wooden reels that held wire. I took one home they were about 36" round and 30" high. I filled cracks and holes, then painted with an outdoor paint the inside and bottom edge. I put casters on the bottom so this reel could roll around, then tiled the top and the top Edge. We used it for many years as an end table in the yard it came out pretty. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the finished table but Below is the stock photo of what the reels look like:
That is called slab. I had a big stack of it from the lumber I sawed for my cabin. I used it for siding this pole barn. I sawed them in 4' sections because of taper. It isn't very neat looking but it did the trick just for the cost of the 40d nails.