The part of my job I enjoy least is seeing skips fill up, often with things that my particular clients don’t love - but someone else might. It’s satisfying on many levels when we can salvage, re-use or re-purpose something, and some of my favourite examples are below. Sites like Freecycle are increasingly helping people to move furniture and building materials on to new homes without them going to landfill. I don’t charge my clients for any help I can give regarding moving “stuff” to new owners, rather than the skip.
These floating shelves are made of left over kitchen workbench. They stop short of the wall, to ensure the visual symmetry of the wall each side of the window remains...and also allowing the speaker cable to go up the back, so the speaker can be on any shelf.
This beautiful cupboard was £50 on eBay because the top had cracked in transit. We re-used some leftover kitchen worktop and turned it into a lovely bathroom vanity, in a traditional style bathroom.
This utility room had previously been the family study, with very solid bespoke bookcases. I couldn't bear to see them go into the skip, and the narrow room didn't have room for deep cupboards due to the back of a chimneybreast, so we put doors on them, made a matching cupboard at the end....
....and behold - a larder and a cupboard at the far end for hoovers, ironing boards etc.