Ok, I admit to being spendy at times. Like furniture. Seems like I buy an inordinate amount of furniture. What with three dogs, two cats (well, one cat now) an occasional bunny, my furniture gets a pretty good work out. Probably why I pick Ikea so often. I have bought expensive name brand before - it didn't last any longer than the Ikea so I figure why spend so much more money?Well, my couch broke. Those damn Ikean Swedes, who use only reclaimable wood, joined together two pieces to make a 1 X 4 (or the Swedish equivalent) and the damn thing busted. I found another frame, for $35 on Craig's list but I don't think the seller really wanted to sell it. At least she didn't want to spend as much time talking about the couch as she did the collection of light house memrobilia. Now I am not one to dis a nice light house collection but I wanted the couch. So, anyway, I started looking at the sofa and trying to figure out what to do with the frame, (reuse, reuse) and then I came up with a plan.I fixed the damn couch. I got a 1 X 6, 72 inches long and a 1X4 same length, glued the wood on the frame back together and clamped it, then proceeded to install the 1 X 6 to . the front of broken wood, and the 1 X 4 to the back of it. Worked like a charm! Cost- $9 for the lumber. This was less than buying a frame used- or a new Lillberg couch ($299). So maybe we need to ad another "R" to Re-use, Re-Duce and Re-cycle- maybe it should be Re-pair, Re-use, Re-Duce and Re-cycle. I know that is just a basic repeat of re-use, but in this case It kept a bunch of wood out of the wastestream. Now on to repairing my work jacket!
7 comments:
Yay! The landfills love you, Rob! That reminds me, I have a stack of mending to tackle...JenK
Yea, Rob - repair the damn thing! Right on!
Are you sure you don't want a real dog...one that could rid you of that couch in one torrent of frustration?
Bunnies... have you Bunnies? Tell me about the bunnies...
I had a bunny. HEr name was Redeye B. Bunny. THe B stood for bitch. She was not very friendly,but I loved her all the same. She was a gift from a couple of gals who wanted male bunnies and unfortunately was kept in a room, alone while the boy bunny got all the attention and lovin and socailising- so she never got to close to humans. Sadly she passed away. I think I still have some of her teeth marks in some of my furniture!
Rob,
Hey, nice job on the couch! Just wanted to let you know the green book arrived safe and sound today. Thank you so much for the giveaway! I've already read through the first few chapters and am thinking "damn, if I had found this book a year ago, I could have SAVED MYSELF A YEAR OF BLOGGING!".
Thanks for the interesting read. Although you'll be sure to hear me bring up a couple points about it on my blog!
- 'Burbs
Good for you! Fix-it is a lost art. I am re-tackling my broken vacuum cleaner this weekend. First try, failed. But try and try again until I have more pieces of the damned thing outside of the chassis than in. Then I may (or may not) declare failure.
I'm happy to say that my husband is the fix-it KING. He's resurrected things that I was sure were goners. We have three pretty large dogs, though, and finally sprung for a leather sofa. Second best thing we've ever done, right after wood floors. ;-)
It's Reduce, reuse, recycle since reducing consumption is the most important!
And repairing is part of reusing surely.
Post a Comment