Cool Hunting Green - Repurposed Furniture and Other Creative Gems

This exciting furniture is a creation of designer Boris Bally. He has found a creative use for repurposed road signs. Not only has he made these chairs out of old destined for the trash heap road signs, they are also very comfortable and have a distinct modern design to them, with long narrow backing. The designer has coined the phrase Humanufactoring. It’s easy to see why, these as well as his other impressive range of furniture are all hand made.

These chairs as well as his other furniture are made to be easily taken apart and then reassembled, so they can be flat packed for easy transport.

I’ve seen another type of this furniture at my local Mexican takeaway restaurant up at Oxford street, except they are stools and not as well made as these. They tend to have sharp edges and scrape your legs if you are not too careful.

These chairs have two rounds of deburring on them to prevent this from happening, the attention to detail is very good and will make the difference to a good piece of repurposed furniture to an excellent piece. As you are using old or second hand material you cannot always get the precision of a factory made object, that also helps in the appeal of a piece - being handmade - but it can also have the downside of an unfinished looking  and feeling piece of furniture.

For more on this designer see the following websites www.borisbally.com and www.snagmetalsmith.org

Remix your Old Lounge
This is an example of taking repurposed furniture and then customising it to match the individual. The designers at Life is Suite (what a cool name, I wish I’d thought of it) have turned an old disused couch into a masterpiece with original art work to create something that is an expression of the individual that it was created for.

In this example of a couch they have used material from old aprons, tea cloths and much more to reflect the identity of who it was designed for, the potential is limitless, you could use cloths - maybe a favorite pair of old jeans form the person to be made part of the fabric of the chair or couch.

I particularly like the colour and vibrancy of this piece. It’s yelling for you to give it some attention, to snuggle up on it.

You could write poems, a story or ad images of memories and moments to be caught forever or until the fabric is warn out on this couch. Even put recipes on here, or games you could play when there’s nothing on TV.

I would ad some retro patterns, maybe a few recipes and some fun images, only your imagination is your limitation.

As soon as I saw this mat I wanted it, it’s such a beautiful colour and worn texture, it’s not cheap at $688 from www.branchhome.com but it sure is original and a great example or repurposed furniture.

I’ve not come across a lot of repurposed furniture that are floor coverings, but it’s one area that would be fairly easy to source material for and would add another layer of rich texture to a room.

I especially like the rich colour tones that look like a worn wood floor. It looks very well made that is mounted on a backing of reconstituted leather using water-based glue.

I like how the designer has used mainly dark tones of blacks and blues and then just introduced a hint of colour with the deep tans, reds and browns.

I also like round mats as they add another strong shape to a square room and help to break up strong right angles.

This is one of the best examples of repurposed furniture I’ve seen for a while, it’s so modern and simple in it’s application of the material and in the form of it’s design.

Repurposed furniture works best when the application of material is done with the minimal of construction. Here the material is weaved in and through itself to form not only a great looking texture but a very strong functional support.

Post-industrial automotive seat belts are an excellent choice of material, they are easy to access and are a lovely texture, very smooth to touch and extremely strong to fasten things to.

The combination of the solid Maple wood gives this piece a strong structure to work from and softens the look of the piece while providing a little bit of contrast from the deep shiny black of the seat belts.

The website where the product - www.vivavi.com is from has many other great pieces of furniture, ,a real goldmine.

Reclaimed Wood A Compositional Masterpiece - http://www.uncommongoods.com

Designed from gifted artist Margret Taylor these rich design pieces are a compositional masterpeices. Look at the colours and shapes, they create a magnetic amount of energy and interest.

These old house panels are marked and weathered over time to create e rich texture that begs for your attention and inquisition.

They are sure to add a uniqueness to any room that is special enough to have it hold these beauties.

I love the description of a patchwork quilt that is on the Uncommongoods website, it accurately describes these textured cubed storage chests. It comes rustic material with a modern shape - which are the principles of repurposed furniture.

You can choose colours and be assured they are all one of a kind.

Be sure to check out the other similar items such as Reclaimed Patchwork Headbed With Bed Frame, Reclaimed Patchwork Three Tier Coffee Table, Reclaimed Patchwork End Table With Shelf and Reclaimed Patchwork Bench / Small Coffee Table. They are all so reasonably priced for handmade furniture with such beauty.

Looks Good and holds 5 metres of Books!  http://www.nobodyandco.it

I need one of these desperately, I’ve got way too many books for all those trips to the bookstore and walking out with full bags.

I like the modern design sensibility  with bright colours and geometric shape. It’s the kind of design that fits in with your other pieces of furniture without dominating the room too much.

The top level is especially useful as you can put longer books there.

The fact that it holds so many books is one of the best aspects with this piece. So if you’re lazy like me you can choose a book without ever having to leave your set, hang on… that could be dangerous!

It would be good to have a place for magazines and larger books but then you would loose the clean straight lines that really make the chair work as such a groovy looking piece of furniture that would look amazing in any house.

Highly Original and Very Functional - www.screwhead.org

One of the best websites I’ve come across on repurposed furniture, who would of thought - Repurposed Bike Furniture!

The designer has done a really amazing job at creating what looks like very comfortable and functional furniture.

There is a whole lot of different furniture on the website including groovy Bike Mirrors, Bar Stools, and Tables, all look very functional and highly creative. Be sure to check out the Metra Cocktail Table - made from bike handle bars and a green window from a commuter train.

I started thinking how on earth did this designer come to creative bike furniture - that would be a cool story in itself! They have listed this web link of this British Designer - Marcel Breuer as their inspiration - www.designmuseum.org

Hackney Lite - this is a follow up piece from the Hackney Shelf.
Designed by Peter Ryan Frank they are an interesting idea. Originally set up around a city of Gaf artiest to tag them and put their coolest artwork on them. After that they were taken down and assembled onto furniture - like this shelf on wheels.

It brings the street into your living room, or you can buy plan ones and tag them yourself. They are made from OSB board which contains waste wood chips - so not only are they a great example of repurposed furniture they are also made from recyclable material.

Also check out their other products, the Strata, Shanty , Inkuku, and Ishongololo. I wonder where the names come from?

I’ve collected some of my favorite websites on the best examples of repurposed furniture, check out the Vintage Ski chair and Scrabble furniture - ingenious!

All these objects seem to be made really well to, they aren’t junk that will fall apart when you actually start using them. You can see really people using them. That was my first concern when looking at buying some of this furniture for myself, there has to be good craftsmanship.

For craftsmanship on of my favorite websites is chasedeforest.com These guys really know how to make a beautiful object not only look great using the best principles of repurposed furniture, they also make each object work as a functional piece of furniture.

Some of their other wooden objects have amazing detail and it’s obvious the level of workmanship in them. I need to start saving my pennies so I can buy one one day.

I Dugg this the other day - you can follow it at this location - Repurposed furniture

I love repurposed furniture, there are so many unique pieces that are so creative, here I want to showcase the best repurposed furniture on the web.

I saw this on this great blog I found on Google - hautenature.blogspot.com It’s made from pennies, It would be cool to use all different kinds of coins from different countries, you could also use coins of different sizes. I love the big generous shape of the chair, it makes you just want to drape yourself on it. The patterns the coins form are also really interesting. Because the chair is so curvy you get these really nice patterns forming on the chair arms.

The fact that there really are not any pronounced chair legs make your eyes focus on the top half of the chair, it almost gives the felling that the chair is floating or hovering. This also helps to emphasis th dramatic organic shape of the chair.

Using coins that have some shine still left on them makes interesting shapes where the light hits the chair.

It’s a really smart use of materials as the chair has been repurposed from coins. I think using different coins would create different patterns but they would have there own interesting shape. I wonder what other furnature could be made out of coins? as coins are relatively small they lend themselves to large curvy shapes.

Check out this cool Hose chair, a classic idea for repurposed furniture from www.chasedeforest.com There modern, sleek, colourful and totally repurposed. Because the garden hose is made from rubber they have a little give in them which make them ideal material for a chair as when you sit in them this chair will fold slightly beneath you for better comfort.

You could also create different and new patterns without having to buy a new chair, just take off the hose and re wire it to suite. You could also use two hoses with different colour rubber to get a collection of colours.

The solid stainless steel frame can be used for out door furniture or indoor.

This artist also makes some great hose baskets, all with bright different colours that really inspire you to take out the washing! These colours could also be used on this chair.
After sleeping oe this for a night I’ve also had another thought, what about coloured hoses that have additional colours lines going through them, I’ll have to try and find an example.

Also by the same artist as above - www.chasedeforest.com I love repurposed furniture but when there done with vintage pieces it takes the design to a whole new level. I guess it’s because these skis have a former life that a lot of materials would envy. Speeding over perfect glass water causing spills and thrills all day long. Just looking at these vintage skis makes you smile. Each ski is unique and has groovy vintage writing on them and some designed patterns and shapes.

The ski shapes make for the perft back rest, arms and legs, so not only is it highly functional it also looks damn cool.

I especially like how you can see the wood grain in the skis, there’s no plastic fantastic of other new age materials that are used today, these are just old school skis with a lot of flavor.

It looks like only a few bolts were used to actually put the ski’s together, maybe some glue as well.

The is called a mag table and is by a Mexican designer by the name of fco.cantu - that looks quite suspect but it’s all I could find on his website at www.coroflot.com It looks very strong as the designer has kept the thinness quite limited and has made it very compressed.

One of the best things I like about this piece of repurposed recycled furniture is that it has such a modern shape, I love the gentle curve of the legs of the table up to the surface of the table, it’s gentle and by doing this there is no need for any extra reenforcement of another type of material or brace. I wonder if there is any wood used for the table top, although these is no appearance of it sloping away.