With a little imagination and creativity, you can turn ordinary furnishings and accessories into unique and stunning budget home decor.
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Recycling Junk and Architectural Salvage for Chic Home Decor
Recycling junk into chic things for the home is fun and it adds great style to the decor. It also keeps those items out of the landfill sites.
Creative designers and homeowners are finding all sorts of ideas for chic home decor items, using ordinary junk that many people would simply send to to the landfill sites. In fact, those landfill sites are good places to forage for things that could be turned into something entirely different. Most human-made objects can have a second or even third life for other uses. Here are some tips and ideas for re-creating those things most often discarded.
Creating With Old Doors
Old doors have numerous uses. The simple hollow doors can be turned into sewing and craft tabletops. Glass doors can become cabinet doors, or can be hinged onto a cold-frame in the garden. Vintage multi-paneled doors can make great coffee table tops, and several could be turned into a wardrobe or cupboard with good carpentry skills. When old pine is stripped of layers of paint, the wood is beautiful and warm – well worth saving from the landfill sites.
New Life for Old Dining Room Chairs
Old dining room chairs can be given a second life with a few fix-ups. For most rickety chairs that get tossed in the garbage, the problem is loose chair legs, missing spindles or worn and torn seat covers. Loose chair legs may simply need glue and clamps as they dry. Missing spindles can be replaced.
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The chairs can be given a chic and shabby look with coat of white or creamy white paint and the seat coverings can easily be replaced. Thrift shops often have inexpensive upholstery weight fabric for those homeowners who are on a budget.
Vintage Lighting Fixtures
Vintage lighting fixtures can be re-invented, using components from several fixtures. For the most part, the nuts and bolts are standard or the same sizes and all can be re-used in the new creation. The components include all the different decorative pieces that slip onto a hollow brass or steel bar hidden within the fixture. This hollow bar is the piece where the wire is pulled through.
Creating a funky new light fixture, whether for the ceiling, or table lamp, does require some creative thinking and a lot of trial and error before actually wiring it up. Lighting is easy to re-wire, but it's advisable to get a professional if in doubt.
Read on
How to Hold an Annual Vintage Cottage Chic Sale
Junk Style Decorating
Decorating with Junk
Architectural Salvage
Architectural salvage of all kinds can be used in home decor. Newel posts make great giant candle holders. Add a 12" square of a wood board to the top, as well as wider base for sturdiness and the homeowner could have a plant stand. There are numerous types of architectural salvage including anything from used bricks to Gothic windows.
Old salmon-colored bricks make wonderful garden paths and are useful for edging the garden beds. Gothic windows are art pieces on their own and could simply be hung on a wall or placed in front of a large picture window.
Junk can Have a Longer Life
The key to recycling junk for home decor is to look at a piece and think of how it can be re-used. Ask yourself how it could still have function with a little work, if it could be re-created into a beautiful art piece or re-used in a manner other than its original intention. Most junk can do at least one of the things above. The owner will be creating something unique for the home as well as giving that "junk" a longer life, saving them from the landfill site.
