I offer an experimental service I like to think of as heirloom reincarnation, in which the client owns an old piece of furniture they don’t particularly like but can’t bear to throw out and I take it apart and turn it into something else new and usable. I can preserve any distinctive design elements of the original if desired, but this is NOT furniture restoration or simple refinishing, and I suspect most preservationists would be horrified by this practice. I can even take two (or three!) pieces of old furniture and combine them into one new interesting thing, Frankenstein-style.

I have turned dressers into bathroom vanities, console cabinets into coffee tables, bookshelves into…smaller bookshelves. The size of the new piece does have to be smaller than the old piece since I often have to remove nails and staples and things from the ends of boards by cutting off the edges. Some material loss is to be expected, but all in the name of REUSE, which is the most sustainable way of recycling material. If your piece contains fiberboard or particleboard, it’s probably not worth Frankensteining. But sometimes old furniture has really nice old-growth wood in it, but the design is ugly or dysfunctional somehow. This is where I come in. Redirect your waste to my workshop.