12 new things you can do with old furniture

#2 Old Furniture : Dressers

There are many effortless ways you can reuse old furniture like a heavy wooden dresser; by stripping, sanding and painting old furniture you give it a new lease on life – upcycle an unused dresser by painting it to match your current décor; remove some or all of the drawers to use it as open shelving. When it comes to restoring old furniture, keep in mind that many older pieces are very solidly built; you can even transform a sturdy dresser into a unique kitchen island to help increase your storage and counter space.

#3 Old Furniture : Storage

Creative storage containers are easy to make; while finding ways to reuse old furniture, ideas can come to you with a quick look around. When upcycling your old dresser into a cubby, don’t forget to repurpose the drawers as storage – for larger drawers, add casters and simple lids to create cute, movable storage boxes; old office furniture, like filing cabinets or desk drawers can also be used in this way. Keep old paint cans and containers, give them a good scrubbing so they can be reused to store art supplies, stationary or even makeup brushes! Add style by making them a uniform colour when painting; old furniture pieces aren’t the only things that can be given a facelift, after all.

#6 Old Furniture : Wooden Ladders

While you can refurbish old wood furniture, a wooden ladder / step ladder has a very clear shelf life. It’s safer not to try and fix it up to be used for its original purpose, as you can when restoring old furniture of other kinds – but it can be recycled in brand new ways! For straight ladders, unique picture frames, or a trellis are good choices, while a step ladder has many other uses; just reinforce the structure and it can be used as unusual shelving – either hung on the wall, or standing, depending on size. You could also do something similar with antique wooden chairs that are straight backed and solidly built.

#7 Old Furniture : Salvaged Crates & Pallets

When you’re working on a bigger project to recycle or reuse old furniture, ideas that utilise salvaged wood can be more wallet friendly. Plus, not only are wooden packing crates and construction pallets solidly built, once sanded and refurbished, they can have the appearance of old furniture or more modern pieces, depending on how they’re finished. Old pallets on saw horses can make a solid home office desk, while crates are easy to repurpose as tables or even into the style of an old chair.

#8 Old Furniture : Trunks & Boxes

Restoring old furniture can be a very satisfying and rewarding process – especially when it comes to pieces that carry their own stories, such as old travel trunks and boxes. These old furniture pieces, once restored, are great for storing less used items, like blankets and guest sheets. To up the practicality when you want to reuse old furniture ideas that seem obvious are often the most feasible, for example, placing a sturdy stone, glass or wood panel on top of an old wooden trunk / box to create a DIY coffee table – make sure that this panel can be lifted whenever the contents of the trunk need to be accessed.

#9 Old Furniture : DIY Pots & Planters

Wheelbarrows, chipped mugs, old sinks, or even a cracked uruli… many things can find new life as a home for your plants! Plus, you can’t always refurbish old wood furniture to its original use; an old chair that can no longer hold the weight of a person can be shored up with bricks, sand or pots to hold smaller creepers and hanging vines in your garden. You could also refurbish old furniture like coat stands, pedestal light poles or wooden screens as a framework for climbing plants and hanging pots. 

#11 Old Furniture : Cribs

Sometimes old furniture holds sentimental value – like with an antique wooden crib that’s been in your family for many generations. No one wants to throw out such old wooden furniture pieces, and by restoring old furniture like this, you can make use of them while keeping those memories alive. A crib can be reused as a bench, or even (by adding the front panel as a separator and a glass top) an usual study table.

#12 Old Furniture : Practical Pieces

From finding new purposes for no-longer-useful furniture – such as reusing a Hoosier table as a desk for your home office – to taking the time to overhaul a piece and give it a new use – for example, stripping away the cushioning and using the frame as the base for shelving to refurbish old sofa sets into a credenza or an open cabinet – there are many ways to recycle old furniture pieces. But, weather it’s a broken old sofa to an unusable old table, the practicality of your final piece is the key thing to keep in mind. 

There’s many ways to reuse and recycle pieces that may otherwise have been thrown into a landfill, and we hope this has given you some inspiration. With a little love and creative thinking, we’re sure you can come up with some wonderful new uses for your old furniture, too!