Making Do

[e_moon60]

There's another name for this now, but when I was growing up, my mother could make useful things (and did) out of all sorts of stuff.  Nothing was thrown away (it might be given away) as long as it had any use in it.  She made end tables out of apple boxes, painted them so they were bright an attractive.  She had other furniture, but mostly she

Comments

[6_penny]

Very nice.
My late great uncle Ray (grew up in the 19th century) called that 'making eel pots out apple cores'!

[msminlr]

I can remember helping my mom make bookshelves out of fruit crates. Two crates would be stacked together on their sides, and fastened somehow [don't recall that part]. Where I got to help was wrapping the whole thing in wallpaper. This was long before Contact paper.

[e_moon60]

Yeah, those wooden fruit crates made bookshelves, bedside tables, and stored many things besides the original fruit. So did the bushel and peck baskets that were then easily found. Mother and I both salvaged scrap wood from various shops and used it for a variety of purposes. Also sturdy clean cardboard boxes, which when stiffened with a few coats of paint will last surprisingly long.

[e_moon60]

Oh--and when I was a kid, milk and cream still came in bottles with metal foil caps colored to represent the kind of milk or cream. Just about all the Christmas trees in town were decorated with strings of them; you washed them clean, cut a slit in one side, and overlapped them to make a bell shape and then strung them. Kids learned to do that in first grade, and also to make paper chains from construction paper. The local dairy's colors were green for quart bottles of milk, orange for quarts of skim milk, and purple for whipping cream. The purple bells were prized (not everyone bought cream.)

[e_moon60]

And just to complete the proof of how old I am...the day after Thanksgiving was the day after Thanksgiving, not Black Friday. Not only were stores not open ridiculously early, they were not open on Thanksgiving. Store workers got Thanksgiving off, all of it

[gifted]

Lovely work! Your mother was thrifty, and I love that you've kept these, and kept a use. The shades of teal (and is that grey in the background?) go really nicely with the lounge.

[e_moon60]

The carpet is pale gray; the walls are pale cream. They could use a paint job, but not this year. And new carpet in two of the bedrooms comes first. (The carpet in the LR and hall was sculptured gray that had gotten very worn and stained over the years; the carpet in the bedrooms was long gold shag. The floors are wood under carpet, but a dark reddish stain (like the baseboard in the photograph, that makes the rather small rooms look smaller. Anyway, I'm saving up from the outflow last year when we had that house re-roofed in metal and the LR and hall carpet done, plus the new furniture. (There's a reason there's no picture of the room with the old furniture!)

[gifted]

Oh boy, I had long gold shag in one of my childhood homes. It was a very loud gold too. I loved it -- but I don't think anyone else did.

[e_moon60]

There was a long shag in this house that combined gold and orange and one other color...and turned out to be the exact color of the local scorpion species. You could not see them on the carpet unless they moved. So walking along reading a book down the hall...was not smart. In fact, I learned to watch the floor in front of me carefully at all times.

[filkferengi]

Yay for refurbishing and re-purposing! It's a way to celebrate old memories and make new ones. I hope your Thanksgiving was full of happy memories [also, good emergency seating].

[e_moon60]

The cubes were a hit with the Thanksgiving Day guests, who said they definitely improved the look of the room (and gave a place to put your feet up.) Still a bit tacky with the lids, so today (Yesterday I forgot) will unstick them and prop them catty-wampus again to finish drying. The damp air isn't helping.