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Tuesday, March 31 518Life

Upcycle your way to unique furniture and décor

Time for a Do-Over

A bench that was once an antique headboard; a dress made from plastic grocery bags or jewelry made from silverware: These are just a few examples of upcycling — the art of taking something old and used for one purpose and turning it into something fresh and, oftentimes, unique.

Upcycling can be as simple as reusing that paper grocery bag to line your birdcage or litter box or as complex as breaking down a piece of furniture or garment and whipping it up into something new.

Creative minds do best at upcycling because it's such a formative process. Sure, you can use Pinterest for inspiration, but original ideas can be the most rewarding.

"I don't throw away something till it really has no value any more," says Steven Kroeger, from Albany. Kroeger sells his creations on Etsy at etsy.com/shop/stevenrolfkroeger. "I look at it and think how is it useful again. I learned that from my grandfather. He had quite a few children during the Depression."

Not only is upcycling good for the environment and, oftentimes, your wallet, but it's also more fun than buying new, says Sarah Trop, owner of FunCycled in Troy. At her store, they not only create furniture out of items they find, but they also build and refurbish items from a customer's collection.

Trop started upcycling several years ago. She had numerous family pieces of furniture that weren't her style but that were still in excellent condition. She didn't want to ruin the furnishings, or get rid of them, so she repurposed instead.

Upcycling for her is trying things and seeing where they go. Understanding that sometimes projects won't turn out as you planned, or even hoped, is essential.

"Every time I walk past my pieces I think 'I'm keeping history, but making it stylish,'" says Trop, whose success at the art of upcycling led her and her husband to open FunCycled.
Her favorite creation is a hutch she got from a family friend. It was an unsavory blueish green, and chipped. Now it stands tall in her dining room, painted bright red with dark hardware.

"Furniture is discarded a lot of times for new trendy designs and finishes," Trop says. "This is sad because so much of the new stuff is low-quality pieces. We are keeping the quality and the history and incorporating that into pieces that would otherwise be junk."

The one item that can't be brought back to life, she says? A wobbly chair. Once a chair is unsteady, it will always go back to being unsteady no matter what you do.

Kimberly Houle also likes to make new out of old. She's so good at it, in fact, that she won the Upcycling Show at the Sage Colleges earlier this year.

The college student from Fonda — along with her classmate Elisabeth Morreale — made a dress out of grocery bags and a table out of a window and reclaimed wood.

Houle calls trash day "Treasure Tuesday" because it's the perfect time to check out what people have discarded on the curb.

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"We realized [upcycling] was a great way to repurpose and reuse old materials and make things functional," says Houle. "Once we started making different things such as the dress and the table, we just kept going because it was so much fun."
She recommends newbies start with small projects — such as a side table — before tackling more complex items such as large furniture or intricate clothing. She's a bit of a Pinterest voyeur and loves scouring websites to see what others have done. She also posts her projects to motivate others.

"We throw a ton of stuff away in landfills every year, so if we can show people we can repurpose garbage people can do that and the landfills will be less full," says Houle.
Like Trop, Houle encourages people not to get discouraged, or intimidated — and to have good tools. "Always have a power drill. Power tools are essential," she says. "If you're trying to resurface wood ... things don't work if you don't have power tools."