Yesterday, I posted a question from James, asking for ways to reuse or recycle a whole kitchen, because he’s getting a new one. Thanks to everyone that has commented about that!

At the bottom, I mentioned reducing is the most important part of the recycling triangle. James already seems quite set on getting a new kitchen but other people approaching a similar “new kitchen?” position may want to revamp what’s there rather than starting again. By “other people”, I mean me ;)

Our kitchen is also 15+ years old, is looking rather tired (especially as half the kitchen has one cupboard design, the other half a different one) and the far end is generally pretty dark (as is obvious in the picture!). We did a few things to freshen it up when we moved here two and a half years ago such as repainting the walls a more neutral shade and replacing the very scuffed, dark green hob & sink with lighter alternatives (thanks eBay for second-hand bargains for both!).

More recently (as this week – it’s still drying), we’ve had the nasty grease-attracting spiky artex ceiling reskimmed so once painted, that’ll look fresher and as well as redecorating again, we’re going to add some tiled splashbacks (since there aren’t any at the moment – mucky walls a go go!). We’re hoping to find a replacement for the badly fitted dark vinyl flooring too and improve the lighting somewhat. Will it be as nice as a new kitchen? No — but it’ll hopefully be good enough and more practical so we won’t need to decorate again for a good while (I hate decorating). I don’t think I have the skill or space to do an adequate job of repainting the cupboards (which would make the mismatched doors more uniform) but I’m hoping everything else will freshen it up enough.

Have you revamped an old kitchen to save replacing it? Do you have any tips or suggestions?

Did you include any reclaimed, recycled or upcycled elements in your “new” kitchen? I’d love to hear your stories for inspiration!

I’m back post-lurgy and I thought I’d post this great question from James – asking how to recycle a whole kitchen:

We shall be replacing our kitchen in the next few months. The present one is 15 years old and is perfectly serviceable. I don’t want to “skip” it. Any suggestion as to how I can recycle it?

My first suggestion would be to try to pass it on – lots of people would love a kitchen revamp but can’t afford to go the whole hog so just replace cabinet doors etc. I regularly see sets of door & drawer fronts offered up on eBay, Gumtree or Freecycle/Freegle (and probably Craig’s List in the US). Built-in appliances can be sold/passed on separately too as they often expire before the rest of the kitchen so people might want to replace just those bits.

People don’t just use them for revamping their own full kitchens either – someone might want to make a “tea station” at a community venue, or for storage in a porch/understairs cupboard – so if you’ve not got a lot, someone still might want them for that sort of thing instead. And tatty but still usable cupboards and worksurfaces are still useful in places where function very much trumps form like a garage, cellar or shed – and old sinks are often useful in those places too. We recently covered ways to reuse old ovens (and toaster ovens) too so again, people might want those for non-culinary pursuits where aesthetics are less important.

As for more creative reuses (rather than just reusing stuff for its original purpose), I’ve made oversized planters from wooden cupboard doors before, I’ve seen people making pretty serving trays from doors and Alison Bailey Smith curated an art project last year where people used her old kitchen as art materials.

(Of course, I also have to mention the most important point in the recycling triangle – reduce. New kitchens are very resource intensive and a greener option would be to revamp an old kitchen rather than replacing it with all new …. but you know what, I think that’s a whole ‘nother post for tomorrow! ;) )

Any other suggestions for ways that James could recycle his whole kitchen? Have you given away an old kitchen – or got one from someone else? Any tips?

(Photo by cgarbiano)

Whitney has emailed us, asking about margarine tub lids:

i’m trying to do my part and make sure that i recycle everything that i can, or at least find a way to reuse it. i recycle my #5 containers of cream cheese, margarine, etc, but have nothing to do with the lids, which even if they are also #5 they are not accepted in my recycling.

any ideas of what i can do with them? typically i just put them under plant pots, but i can only have so many plants. and i thought about making coasters, but i don’t really use coasters, so i’m open to some new ideas!

When we get this type of tub, we tend to keep both the lid & the tub to reuse for leftovers instead of Tupperware or use as small storage boxes in other parts of the house (eg, we’ve got one for batteries, one for fuses and one for shoe polish in our misc cupboard). But there are a lot more uses for the tub part than the lids so I imagine there are a lot of lids going in the bin — let’s see what we can do with them :)

Funnily enough, a lot of my ideas are the same as the ones from Monday’s handicapped tags – add them to your tool box for use while decorating/painting, cut them up for plant markers in the garden, cut the rim off and shape the remaining plastic to use as a dough scrapper etc.

Anyone got any more original ideas though? :)

(Photo by cogdogblog)

I mentioned in passing on my simple/frugal living blog that we’re having our kitchen ceiling replastered at the moment.

Ahead of the plasterer starting on Monday, we had to tidy off all the work surfaces and tops of cupboards – quite a challenge for hoarders like us with many, many culinary hobbies! Anyway, among our tidying, I found a couple of half-used bags of coffee beans in an old biscuit tin. My boyfriend John bought them from an expensive coffee bean shop but didn’t really like them – he couldn’t bring himself to throw them away though, better to keep them as a back-up just in case he runs out of his preferred ones. That sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it? Except they’ve been waiting in reserve for quite a while now. So long so that I had to search my old email to find out when we went to the place we bought the beans from (Lincoln). 2007. Five years. Gosh.

They do still smell quite coffee-ish but I suspect they’re long, long, long past their prime!

They could go on the compost heap but I’d rather reuse them in some other way rather than just letting them rot.

They could be ground and used in the same way you can reuse any coffee grounds — the magical internet tells me I can use it for dyeing fabric/yarn or even my hair, and I imagine these virgin beans would result in a deeper colour than already used once ones.

But does anyone have any ideas for ways I could use them whole? Crafty ideas or practical ones?

Ages and ages ago on the Suggest An Item page, Carolyn asked about reusing handicap parking tags – but I missed it until Raynor recently comment last week. Sorry – not sure how it slipped by me! Anyway, better late than never, Carolyn asked:

Every two years my husband’s blue handicap tags for the vehicles expire. The county gives him new ones at no cost. What can we do with the expired tags, made of heavy but flexible plastic? They are about 3.5″ x 6.75″ plus another 2.5″ for the hook at the top.

Raynor suggested cutting them into strips and using them as plant markers in the garden/allotment, since they’ll be weather proof.

Philip also had a suggestion: “I’d put them with your tools and they will come in handy sooner or later.” I imagine that’s what we’d do with them too – I always need stuff like that when I’m filler-ing holes before painting. Speaking of painting, last week I was doing some painting-as-art painting rather than DIY and I could have used something like that as a mixing palette (I ended up using some old plastic packaging instead but it was always to hold).

At this time of year, my seed stash is full to bursting and I like to organise it by sowing date – those tags would be just about the right size to use as dividers in my seed box — and would work much better than the too small bits of cardboard I’m using now.

Flat pieces of heavy yet slightly flexible plastic are useful as dough scrappers when baking or doing any similar crafts (like salt dough or even clay pottery) where you need to scrap your material from the worksurface sometimes.

Finally, one more suggestion from me, ask your county/council if they’ll take them back for recycling. Everyone with the tags in the area will be in a similar position and will need to dispose of them some how – depending on the type of plastic, they might find it easier to get them recycled in bulk than someone relying on consumer recycling services.

Any other suggestions? What would you do with them?