Karen has left us a message on the Suggest an Item page:

Our plastic patio table just broke. The leg snapped straight off. The legs are rounded on the bottom, so it would be hard to replace.

I saw the post about discolored patio furniture, but is there any way to fix/reuse the table? I will have to throw it away if not!

Without knowing why it snapped off, I’d be loathed to suggest putting a lot of time and effort into replacing it – in case the other legs immediately follow suit. If they are likely to jump on the snapping bandwagon, you could pre-empt that by replacing all of the legs now – it would also mean you wouldn’t have to think about making the new one match the old ones.

Any suggestions what could be reused to make replacement legs? My first thought – because we’re just had a load of ours repositioned/replaced – was something like plastic drainpipes — not the prettiest thing in the world but would be as light as the original legs.

The reuses probably depend on the table itself. I’ve been thinking about making a potting bench that would fold up against a wall when not in use – a plastic table top might be light enough that it could just be suspended on chains from the wall rather than needing legs etc, but it would have to be a square/rectangular table and not too big… Another growing idea might be to flip the table top upside down and use it as a giant saucer for under a set of plant pots to catch run off from watering. Here, we could also add it to the shelters/stuff for them to climb on in the chicken run – possibly fixing the legless part to a wall of the run enclosure.

Those are all very growing-and-chicken-owning me type ideas though – anyone got any more varied or otherwise interesting suggestions?

(Oh, and as I said about the discoloured patio furniture last time, most plastic patio furniture is PVC, which isn’t widely collected post-consumer so you might struggle to actually recycle it. People in the UK should probably check with their local council though, just in case they do collect it.)