Does my blog have a mission? Do my readers know it? Buzzing around the web, I ran across this question and took a minute to consider it. I have a tag line that I hope guides readers first thing: New Life for the Tossed and Found. Behind that is my goal for the blog: Make [...]
January 20, 2012
This week I set a $10 limit to find a likely makeover candidate at the thrift store. I searched the Unique Thrift on Howard and Western in hopes of finding something interesting. Slim pickings in the furniture department — just two kitchen chairs. I ended up choosing a shirt from the long racks of men’s [...]
January 17, 2012
Skipping through the discards of life, why are we compelled along the way to pick up one random scrap of paper and not another? Is it the color of the paper that makes us take notice, or the slant of the author’s handwriting, or a doodle? In my case, it was the way the a [...]
January 13, 2012
The weather in Chicago is as volatile as the stock market. Day one: backyard season. Day two: sledding. I used 5 shades of Rustoleum to refresh these file drawers this week, which leads us to the question: Is it self defeating to rescue them from the landfill, but then use spray paint to fix them [...]
January 9, 2012
What’s a good color mid-century modern color combo? It come to mind instantly when I think of spray painting these card catalog drawers. I spied them in a random pile of stuff nobody wants, but nobody knows what to do with. What would you do with a couple broken chairs, some relics from high school [...]
January 3, 2012
As one of my favorite authors, Stephen Fry, once wrote in a book forward: I suffered for my art, now it’s your turn. The saga starts with the found piece of furniture below and my first try at its makeover in August. Semi-finished it, and in December, Apartment Therapy picked it up as a Before [...]
December 19, 2011
A week after we started, we’ve finished the redo of this found couch. My project partner, Mac, spotted it on the parkway as he ran along Sheridan Road one Sunday. He drove back to the spot to retrieve it. We brought it inside, took the before photos and planned the makeover. Glad for the extra [...]
December 15, 2011
Would you be able to pass this up if you came upon it in the parkway? People throw things away for so many reasons. Closure and preserving memory are two that come to mind for this couch. Upon reading the compelling message, we had to take it home. Jogging along Sheridan, one of my kids [...]
December 11, 2011
Actually, I can think of lots of reasons to make these cozy, creative wool mittens, but here’s three earth-friendly ones: 1. You can reuse existing resources - none of this shearing the sheep on one continent, then off to China for production. 2. No need to go out to a store for supplies – the [...]
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January 23, 2012
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