You're talking to a major reuser here. I hate wasting anything. A lot of things in my yard were once something else.
* I have several planter boxes (ranging from 3' to 8' in length and 1' to 4' in width) that were once part of an old redwood retaining wall. The base that the small box sits on is an old trunk stand. An old glass shower door serves as a cover (mini greenhouse) to keep new seedlings warm in the spring. * Many of my plant pot bottoms are lids (coffee, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and such). * I took an old camping cot and turned it into several windchimes. I cut the legs into different lengths (for different tones) and drilled a hole in the top of each. I hot-glued 2 CD's together for the suspension platform. I flattened the leftover pieces of the legs and used them as pivots for the central cord. I used a PVC elbow for the clapper and another CD for the sail. (on some chimes, I used a large flat washers for the clapper). * I took several tie displays I got from work, took off the wheel bases, adn used the grid rack as a fence (I hammered the wheel bases into the ground to support the fence). I now have a 12' chrome fence along the top of a block retaining wall. * On the side of my patio I have 2 large Jasmine plants growing on a 4x3 piece of grid rack I got from Ralph's when the store closed down. I hung the rack on 4 shelf brackets I screwed to the wall. You can't see the rack, just the plant. It actually looks like a perfectly formed hedge -and it never touches the wall. * I took wheeled platforms from old candy shippers I got at work, stgripped them down to bare plastic, placed flat redwood planks (from that old retaining wall) inside them, and use then to wheel around 2 3-tier wire baskets (also salvaged form Ralphs) full of spider plants across my patio in the summer. * My patio umbrella stand is an old VW tire filled with cement. * In my house, I use an old hospital washing pan as my dishpan.
Your talents are being wasted m'dear. Let me explain what I mean. Have you ever considered having a blog and sharing all of these splendid methods/ideas? I am going to read and re-read and re-read this to see what I can apply to our lives. I mean unless you are already writing a newsletter or making this available to others in some different way. That would be a wonderful public service. There are lots of people like me I betcha who want to do the right thing but don't know how. You KNOW HOW and so you have a gift you can share with others. Think about it. Seriously. Thank you for your splendid informative thoughtful creative reply Shuhak and Happy Tuesday! :)
Shuhak 