Re-purposing Furniture

Repurposing furniture may sound like a complicated process, but it is nothing more than finding completely new uses for an existing piece of furniture. Modify it to suit your needs or preferences if you want - designers do this all the time to create a unique look or emphasize a client's personal style. What's to prevent you from re-purposing your own furniture?

We assign names or labels to every thing, letting the assigned name determine its function. But a nightstand does not necessarily belong in the bedroom, and if you focus on your needs rather than a piece's traditional function, you could easily find more uses for it. Besides, re-purposing is the best way to establish your very own style.

Re-purposing furniture lets you give your existing pieces of furniture a new, maybe more exciting life, or buy used furniture and make it new. Let us look at some pieces of furniture that can be re-purposed easily.

Dressers:

The easiest piece of furniture to re-purpose is a dresser. You can change the look by painting it, using new hardware, or dressing up the top with a slab of marble or granite, or even tiles.

• Use a dresser in a bathroom for keeping towels and supplies.
• Move it to the kitchen, to store pots and pans, chopping boards, or anything that needs to be stashed away.
• Take the dresser outside. Store your potting supplies in it, and the top can provide a surface for potting plants if the dresser is the right height.

Tables:

Convert a smaller dining table into a large coffee table by sawing off or changing the legs.

Leaves from a table can be used as shelves.

Use doors as table tops.

Use a tabletop on a wall as a piece of art by painting or distressing the surface.

TV Armoires:

TV armoires have fallen out of favor with the advent of flat screen TVs, but you can easily put them to other uses.

Turn an armoire into toy storage for children.

Change the doors, add a little glass in the back and you have a new wine cabinet.

Use it as a linen cabinet.

Turn an armoire into a home office center. It has enough room to hold your peripherals, printer paper and other office supplies.