Junk is what you make of it
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By STEVE BATIE
Lee Newspapers
Monday, May 12, 2008 2:50 PM CDT
LINCOLN, Neb. -- I’m not fan of country decor.
I don’t mind it in other people’s homes, but it’s just not for me.
Even so, I was just fascinated by a book that came in the mail a few weeks ago: “Junk Beautiful,” by Sue Whitney and Ki Nassauer (The Tauton Press; $21.95; large-format paperback).
It’s a heavily illustrated guide to things you can do to refurbish, recycle and reuse - well - junk. Stuff such as bent coat hooks, paint-encrusted door knobs, bits of architectural salvage and even a rusty chicken feeder.
(Where, exactly, one acquires some of this stuff is a mystery to me, but you never know what will crop up at a garage sale.)
Let’s just say adding value and use to someone else’s trash appeals to my frugal (some would say cheap) nature.
“Junk Beautiful” is organized around the decorating of several rooms, ranging from a home office to a bedroom to a kitchen. It’s a nice real-world touch for a book that very easily could have been a collection of how-to projects.
Not that there aren’t plenty of those.
Whitney and Nassauer explain in detail how they accomplished some of the more complicated designs.
I found especially amusing the one that turned a rusty steel bird cage into a ceiling fixture. You’d have to look pretty closely to even notice.
Then there were the “curtains” made by screwing strips of plastic gutter shield (you use it to keep leaves out of your house gutters) to 1-by-2 stiffeners and hanging them on chains from the window frame.
They came out looking sort of like miniblinds.
For a more industrial look in window decor, you can use large steel baguette baking pans, Whitney and Nassauer suggest.
Finally, the carrier for a croquet set was called into service to corral brooms and mops in a laundry room. No word on the fate of the mallets and balls, although I’m sure they were salvaged for something.
That, in fact, seems to be true of everything in the book. Nothing escapes the creative eyes of these junk shop junkies.
That said, some “Junk Beautiful” designs strike me as a tad peculiar. For instance, if old coat hooks are so prevalent in the junker world, why would anyone design a coat rack that uses wooden-handled braces (of the brace-and-bit variety) instead?
A criminal way to treat antique tools.
And don’t even get me started on the evil done to a fine old workbench in the name of junkification.
Some of the smaller projects are just too cute for words: the hot-plate trivet made by gluing together what appear to be early wooden versions of Legos; the urine specimen bottle called back into service as a pencil holder; the metal windows reused to frame children’s artwork; a tambourine upended to become a corn chip bowl.
It isn’t likely I’ll soon be using a giant metal letter from a theater marquee as a bedside table. And because I just remodeled my bathroom a couple of years ago, I won’t be making a sink vanity out of a hospital gurney.
I don’t think I’ll ever keep my magazines in the hymnal holder from the back of a church pew, and I doubt I’ll be hanging my towels from deer antlers or stuffing them into old restaurant fryer baskets.
Also, no urine specimen bottles in my house.
But if that sort of stuff appeals to you, “Junk Beautiful” might be a good place to get some inspiration.
Send your home repair and remodeling questions to: HouseWorks, P.O. Box 81609, Lincoln, NE 68501, or e-mail: houseworks@journalstar.com.
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