Featured Image Caption: Upcycling Unwanted Furniture Ideas
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Why should you consider upcycling furniture?
Environmental Impact
The manufacturing of many furniture pieces involves burning fossil fuels. This results in negative side effects for both the environment and people. While this process is beyond the consumers’ control, they can ensure the environmental and health impact is minimized by extending the lifespan of each furniture piece. Upcycling older items provides them a new life, while also ensuring they do not end up in a landfill.
Produce a Unique Item
Typically, purchasing a piece of furniture from the store means receiving something that has been mass-produced with minimal individuality. Choosing to upcycle an existing furniture item offers the freedom to produce a uniquely finished product. This type of project could help transform an ordinary furniture item into a focal piece for your home.
Save Money
New furniture can be expensive, especially if you’re trying to follow trends. However, purchasing an older piece of furniture instead, or working with an existing item in your home, is significantly more cost-effective. Considering the market for upcycled items is still growing, you could also choose to sell the piece once it’s finished and make some money as a result.
Enhance Your Creativity
In addition to producing a unique end product, upcycling provides a fun, creative outlet. Whether you decide to follow a traditional design concept or experiment with different styles and techniques, there are a few limitations. This rewarding hobby can be a great opportunity to learn some new skills, explore your creative side, and potentially build a side business.
What furniture items are suitable for upcycling?
Almost any piece of furniture can be upcycled into a new and exciting element of your home decor. There are several different places you can go to find inspiration. If you are looking to recreate an on-trend design, then visiting a local budget furniture store could be the best place to start. These stores will have affordable furniture pieces that are easily recyclable but still align with current industry trends.
If you are hoping to find more unique pieces, then you may choose to look into second-hand furniture options such as garage sales, vintage stores, or online sellers like Facebook Marketplace. You would be surprised by the types of furniture that are available in these stores. With a little paint, sandpaper, and wood stain, these DIY projects can help elevate your current interior design.
Some furniture items that are suitable for upcycling include:
- Bookshelves
- Window frames and shutters
- Ladders and scrap wood
- Wooden crates and pallets
- Reclaimed wood
- Dressers
- Various types of tables and chairs
Essentially, any item that you can add value to by changing or updating is ideal for an upcycling project. Ideally, these projects will help make the piece more desirable, financially valuable, aesthetically pleasing, and emotionally satisfying.
What are some common upcycling methods?
Convert a cabinet into a bar
By taking the doors off of an old cabinet, you can easily transform it into a home bar. All that is required for this project is a little sanding and paint of your choice. Once completed, you can fill it with some fun glasses and your favourite spirits.
Turn a dresser into a sink vanity
Old dressers tend to have many intricate details and distinct features, making them more ideal for a bathroom vanity than a store-bought unit. Before starting your upcycle, double-check that the top of your dresser is wide enough to accommodate the chosen sink and faucet. After you’ve designed the exterior to fit your ideal aesthetic, all that’s left is to cut a hole in the back where the plumbing will go.
Reuse an old door as a tabletop
Repurposing items originally meant for something else—such as architectural salvage—can help create visually appealing pieces. Vintage doors are the perfect material to be converted into a tabletop. You can make the piece low to the ground or raised, depending on your specific needs.
Frame mirrors
Mirrors are often useful yet dull elements of a room’s interior design. Adding a picture frame to the exterior edge of your mirror is an easy DIY project that can elevate an existing piece. You can either choose to size the mirror yourself with a glass cutter or find a frame design that is the same shape.
How can you sustainably recycle furniture?
Donate old items
Once you complete a restoration project, it may be time to discard the older furniture in your home. Rather than simply throwing it away, furniture pieces are accepted by many different charitable organizations. You can arrange to have your unwanted pieces picked up by a furniture removal service and delivered to an organization of your choice.
Share them with friends and family
Upcycling is an exciting hobby that can easily be shared with other people. Not every project you work on needs to go inside your home. Instead, you could opt to share these pieces with your friends and family. By doing so, you can continue seeking out new pieces of furniture to work on, stopping them from going to waste.
Sell your old furniture
If you want to make some extra money from upcycling, consider selling the pieces after they’re completed. Old furniture can be sold in many different ways, including second-hand shops, online markets, personal networks, and social media. By upcycling your items before selling them, you increase the chances of making a quick sale with a higher return.
Where can you find ideas for upcycling?
As upcycling becomes a more common practice, the number of places to get inspiration increases. You can rely on traditional methods for discovering new ideas, such as visiting a mainstream furniture store or reviewing interior design flyers. That said, you may also choose to search online for ideas or follow other DIY enthusiasts on social media.
The Benefits of Upcycling
Upcycling provides a creative and environmentally friendly approach to reducing waste, conserving resources, and creating unique furniture pieces. In addition to helping improve your home aesthetic, upcycling also reduces the amount of waste that goes to landfills, thus reducing the environmental impact of waste disposal.
As well, the upcycling process encourages cost savings by minimizing the need to purchase new items frequently.
By Devon Graham
who is a blogger in Toronto. He graduated with honours from the University of British Columbia with a dual degree in Business Administration and Creative Writing. Devon Graham is a community manager for small businesses across Canada. He also likes to research various topics related to pets, food, storage solutions and business solutions.
Member since July, 2021
View all the articles of Devon Graham.
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