The paint is both off the chain AND the canvas!
Since repurposing and Home-Deco have blurry lines, I'm combining them here for our latest Painted Furniture and Repurposing Blog.
You may also continue below for more information,
although the majority of the projects are on the link provided above.
This is a hard one to describe. Imparting enthusiasm about furniture you already hate is difficult, but I'll try. Do you have something that you can't dream of getting rid of for sentimental reasons, or can't afford to change out, yet hate the way it is? If you had the time and got to "rent" an artist's brain, what would you do?

This requires almost as much communication on the part of the client as it does creativity of the artist, but all you have to do is tell me what you dream for a thing and I do my best to make it happen for you. Maybe a picture or two of what it will "live" next to so
Basically, repurposing is just creating a new purpose for an old thing, probably a cross between an artistic renovation of a piece of furniture or tchotchke into something creative and useful besides its original purpose. I use this method in Memorial art pieces, too. The example to the left isn't a really good one, but its the only one I have right now in the house. They were an old pair of sneakers and I was having a hard time finding anything I wanted to do, so I decided to put my life story and the way I felt about it onto the shoes. They broke through the artist's block.
Those are my story, but yours will be just the way you want it. But imagine.... if you had a wine rack and didn't drink anymore due to health reasons. It was a nice object d' art, but it needed to be updated to match your current lifestyle. You want it around because it reminded you of good times, but just didn't need it there with no purpose. Well, we can turn it into a mail box that sits near the front door, where you can file bills and correspondence. All it needs is a little material, glue, some paint and voila! A new purpose for an old thing.
A fun project I love is turning old dressers into shelves. Sometimes, the drawers fall apart and the piece isn't worth salvaging by itself, but if the drawers are taken out and the wood cannibalized, it can be painted and decorated to be a modern work of art itself. Or, the wood and "character" (knocks, dings and bumps) can be further brought out with stains and kept as is, just repurposed into a shelf.
Here are some other ideas:
A lamp out of old glasses
Stacked up speakers as shelves
A lamp out of an old vase that you inherited
Driftwood you collected turned into furniture
A headboard with shelves mounted on the wall without the "legs"
Gutting a lamp that doesn't work and turning it into a vase or knick knack
The sky is the limit. If you get the time to do it yourself, have fun and send me some pictures! If you don't have the time, give me a call, I'd love to hear from you.
Those are my story, but yours will be just the way you want it. But imagine.... if you had a wine rack and didn't drink anymore due to health reasons. It was a nice object d' art, but it needed to be updated to match your current lifestyle. You want it around because it reminded you of good times, but just didn't need it there with no purpose. Well, we can turn it into a mail box that sits near the front door, where you can file bills and correspondence. All it needs is a little material, glue, some paint and voila! A new purpose for an old thing.
A fun project I love is turning old dressers into shelves. Sometimes, the drawers fall apart and the piece isn't worth salvaging by itself, but if the drawers are taken out and the wood cannibalized, it can be painted and decorated to be a modern work of art itself. Or, the wood and "character" (knocks, dings and bumps) can be further brought out with stains and kept as is, just repurposed into a shelf.
Here are some other ideas:
A lamp out of old glasses
Stacked up speakers as shelves
A lamp out of an old vase that you inherited
Driftwood you collected turned into furniture
A headboard with shelves mounted on the wall without the "legs"
Gutting a lamp that doesn't work and turning it into a vase or knick knack
The sky is the limit. If you get the time to do it yourself, have fun and send me some pictures! If you don't have the time, give me a call, I'd love to hear from you.