Do it Yourself: Cute Ways to Recycle Your Furniture

Do it Yourself: Cute Ways to Recycle Your Furniture

These days, it can be fun to buy used furniture at a thrift store and dress it up with various do-it-yourself options from painting techniques, to creating mosaics with tiles, to using the furniture itself to make planter for plants. Drawers can make amazing planters when painted colorfully and creatively. Here are some cute ideas for making your own cute piece of furniture using do-it-yourself methods.

Paint a Table

Choose a bedside table and get to work. Using oil paints and polyurethene over it is a great idea. You can paint a flower, tree, or something else on the top of the table for effect. You also could use decopage techniques on the top for fun instead of painting a design. Be sure to preserve your artwork with a sealing type of top coat.

Have Fun With Tiles

Use spare tiles or crushed tiles to make a mosaic. Old furniture is great for mosaic making, and all it really takes is some spackle and imagination to transform something into a creative piece. You can also add things that glitter like crystals or rocks and make the object even more interesting. Creating your own mosaic may take days to design or just a few minutes depending on the type of look you want.

Give Old Pieces a Facelift

Use an abstract art approach using oil paint and an old dresser; the effect is fun if you use sponges to put paint in seemingly random patterns. Sponge painting or almost finger painting style works well with this medium to create a new piece of furniture that’s irreplaceable and more interesting than an old, faded paint job.

Homemade Bookcase

Make bookshelves out of cinder blocks and nice pieces of wood that you can paint or stain. If you make enough of these, the effect is impressive, and takes the place of a more elaborate or expensive bookcase. The quality of the wood should be strong if you wish to have a look that is more convincing of real furniture.

No matter what project you are working on, it’s fun to use your imagination along with whatever you have on hand. Making old furniture into planters can be satisfying if you have a container garden, or wish to establish one. For your most ambitious projects, be sure you can find the right tools by searching online; be sure to wear eye protection when using power tools, Rotozip parts or paint strippers and remember, the limits on projects like this are only that which you place.