Looking around our home, I realise most of the furniture is recycled. My husband made the dining table out of planks from his Dad, the chairs don’t match but I painted them all the same. When my mother in law downsized, I painted all the garden furniture which she had no need for. The lounge suite, piano, coffee tables were all passed on. We even scored the kitchen bench from someone who was doing up an old house. Friends had concrete laundry tubs lying in long grass and an old chip heater and hot water cylinder in their garage. We have found that people doing up houses are reluctant to chuck their old stuff on the tip, so we take things away – including a house-lot of windows from a home being refitted with aluminium frames, which the owner was going to have to pay to dump at the tip. We never say no to an offer and over time have passed on only a few things we couldn’t use.
31
May