DIY project du jour:
Got milk (crates)? Turn plastic crates into a credenza.
Friend of Unconsumption Will Holman made this one, and he provides a tutorial over on Instructables here, so you can make one of your own.
Find more crate reuse here.
Here’s another item to add to the category of repurposed tennis gear:
Tennis balls, sprucing up a worn chair with missing cushions. Made by Will Holman, whose work we’ve highlighted several times here.
The balls, which aren’t glued down, are placed in holes in the wood so there’s some flexibility when body weight’s applied to them. For Will’s how-to / tutorial and additional photos, see Instructables.
See also: more chairs here.
Friend of Unconsumption Will Holman, whose furniture and other repurposing projects we’ve highlighted several times (grouped here), used scrap wood to refresh a pair of damaged 35-year-old Steelcase credenzas.
For a project like this, Will says a variety of reclaimed wood, such as pallet wood, or old flooring or molding, could be used.
Check out Will’s photos and tutorial over on Instructables.
Today’s tutorial:
How to make armchairs out of scrap wood.
Friend of Unconsumption Will Holman (featured previously here) made these chairs, and says this about them over on Instructables:
Armchairs are tough. It is awfully difficult to get the arms integrated, the structure sexy, and the ergonomics tight. Working with the nice folks over at the ReBuilding Exchange (rebuildingexchange.org), nestled by the banks of the Chicago River, I put together these armchairs over the last few weeks. Each has a pine frame of salvaged 2” x 4”s and a seating surface made of old maple flooring. Compact, materially efficient, and handsome enough for the living room, you can slap together a pair of these in a weekend, adapting the design to whatever wood you have on hand. I finished mine with a couple of coats of non-toxic, all-natural tung oil, giving the wood a hand-rubbed glow that’s easy to refresh as it ages.
To make your own chairs, you’ll need one or more saws, a router, and a sander, in addition to wood and wood screws.
How-to details here: Scrap Armchair on Instructables
![A “door desk” — the latest reuse project of friend of Unconsumption Will Holman.
Want to make one? Check out the tutorial/how-to details at Startwoodworking.com.
Will’s work in repurposing a variety of objects is impressive. For earlier Unconsumption posts on Will’s furniture and fencing made from old traffic signs, bowls (formerly license plates and real estate signs), a table made from cardboard tubes, and lighting, look here.
[Thanks, Will!]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq3bf2ETlK1qzv12bo1_r1_400.jpg)
A “door desk” — the latest reuse project of friend of Unconsumption Will Holman.
Want to make one? Check out the tutorial/how-to details at Startwoodworking.com.
Will’s work in repurposing a variety of objects is impressive. For earlier Unconsumption posts on Will’s furniture and fencing made from old traffic signs, bowls (formerly license plates and real estate signs), a table made from cardboard tubes, and lighting, look here.
[Thanks, Will!]
To add to the Unconsumption gallery of new uses for old road signs is this chair from friend of Unconsumption Will Holman, who says:
I put together this sleek chair out of a recycled road sign and some salvaged pecan wood, materials that were all sourced within a mile of my Alabama home. The signs came from the local county engineer’s yard, where they sat in a stack after twenty-plus years of faithful service on Alabama’s rural roads. Pecan wood is a species of hickory, native to the American south. It is dense, tight-grained, and strong, perfect for furniture construction.
The resulting chairs are low-slung, laid-back loungers; some were left un-cushioned for use on the back deck, and others were upholstered with either smooth or ribbed cushions for use inside.
(Via Will and Startwoodworking.com, which provides a how-to/tutorial. Thx, Will!)
![Over on Instructables, designer Will Holman, whose work we’ve featured previously [metal signs and license plates repurposed as bowls (here and here); a table; a lamp], writes about a related initiative: working with a group of YouthBuild students in Greensboro, Alabama, to build a fence out of old road signs.
YouthBuild (http://www.youthbuild.org) is a national program funded by the Department of Labor that provides low-income young people a chance to study for their GED and acquire trade skills, all while earning a small stipend for their labor. This fall, my students and I built a fence adjacent to our campus. It encloses a playground constructed by the Rural Studio (http://www.ruralstudio.org) in 1997 and currently used by a daycare center. The local county and state highway engineering offices donated old road signs, which we then cut, sanded, filed, and drilled to create pickets. Using jigs and a self-organized assembly line, the students manufactured nearly a thousand pickets for roughly 225 linear feet of fencing.
(via Road Sign Fence)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_likmxeAu0V1qzv12bo1_400.jpg)
Over on Instructables, designer Will Holman, whose work we’ve featured previously [metal signs and license plates repurposed as bowls (here and here); a table; a lamp], writes about a related initiative: working with a group of YouthBuild students in Greensboro, Alabama, to build a fence out of old road signs.
YouthBuild (http://www.youthbuild.org) is a national program funded by the Department of Labor that provides low-income young people a chance to study for their GED and acquire trade skills, all while earning a small stipend for their labor. This fall, my students and I built a fence adjacent to our campus. It encloses a playground constructed by the Rural Studio (http://www.ruralstudio.org) in 1997 and currently used by a daycare center. The local county and state highway engineering offices donated old road signs, which we then cut, sanded, filed, and drilled to create pickets. Using jigs and a self-organized assembly line, the students manufactured nearly a thousand pickets for roughly 225 linear feet of fencing.
(via Road Sign Fence)
![Designer Will Holman, whose work we’ve featured previously (bowls here and here; table here), told us about his recent lamp-making project, the “burnout lamp”:
Fluorescent lamps are synonymous with the most depressing aspects of modern life: their soulless flickering presides over vast aisles of big box stores, server farms, fields of cubicles, and parking garages. Yet, as individual objects, they are sleek, glossy white tubes, efficient in both form and purpose. I thought it nice to marry these contradictions into a lamp that used burned-out tubes to diffuse the light from a single, working fluorescent. The result is a study in opposites: lightness and weight, fragility and solidity, delicacy and mass. A concrete base supports a column of white glass, classical in form and color, but modern in material and concept.
Read Will’s instructions, plus some cautionary notes, over on Instructables.
[Thanks, Will!]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhnfq194h21qzv12bo1_r1_400.jpg)
Designer Will Holman, whose work we’ve featured previously (bowls here and here; table here), told us about his recent lamp-making project, the “burnout lamp”:
Fluorescent lamps are synonymous with the most depressing aspects of modern life: their soulless flickering presides over vast aisles of big box stores, server farms, fields of cubicles, and parking garages. Yet, as individual objects, they are sleek, glossy white tubes, efficient in both form and purpose. I thought it nice to marry these contradictions into a lamp that used burned-out tubes to diffuse the light from a single, working fluorescent. The result is a study in opposites: lightness and weight, fragility and solidity, delicacy and mass. A concrete base supports a column of white glass, classical in form and color, but modern in material and concept.
Read Will’s instructions, plus some cautionary notes, over on Instructables.
[Thanks, Will!]
Cool recycled license plate bowls from Will Holman.
Form created by only cutting, bending, and bolting — a completely waste-free process. The bends and juncture of the two plates are secured with small machine bolts. The legs are made from 5/8” carriage bolts, head-down for smooth contact with countertop or table.
More of Will’s work on Etsy
Paper or Plastic table by Will Holman
I salvaged all the tubes for free, as well as the plastic for the top; I spent maybe fifteen dollars on hardware, nuts, washers, etc. The table was built with simple hand tools — drill, hacksaw, wrench, and screwdriver. It took about ten to fifteen hours to make. It is strong enough to stand on, yet light enough to lift with one hand, and one hundred percent recyclable at the end of its life.
more on Instructables
This wood scrap table was made completely of salvaged wood rescued from decaying buildings in and around Hale County, Alabama. It was commissioned by the good folks at PieLab, a pie shop, design center, teaching resource, and business incubator in Greensboro. All told, the project cost less than $100 and, with the help of a few friends, took only a couple weekends’ work…
(more at re-nest)
