When you buy a new place you want to fill it with the right furniture, but sometimes you don’t want to get everything from your nearest Swedish Home Megastore. With a little creativity, it’s possible to re-purpose what you’ve got lying around and a few savvy purchases into unique, budget- and environmentally-friendly furniture. Take, for example this DIY coffee table made of marble and copper piping.

When Kiko and I bought our first home earlier this year, we wanted to decorate it with interior design pieces that we loved, and that would love us back over time. Since we wanted items that would be unique as well as functional, we realized that we might just have to make some of these things on our own, and luckily, Kiko enjoys making furniture. We already had the marble slab, which we’d procured at an estate sale years before (we’ve earmarked the original iron base for a dining table we’re working on) so all that was needed was a new base of some sort.

We knocked around some ideas – Wide block of sustainable wood? Corrugated cardboard? But in the end, we elected not to go with any of these, and went back to the drawing board. While walking around the hardware store, Kiko had a moment of inspiration, and ended up making a base for the table out of copper piping. He fitted the pipes together with copper glue, and stuck rubber stoppers on the base to hold the heavy piece of marble in place. He finished the table by adding padding on the bottom so that it wouldn’t scratch the floor. The copper piping proved to be the most expensive part, at about $90; the glue, rubber stoppers and felt pads added on another $10. Not too bad.

The process of furnishing our home with found and DIY objects is helped along by taking stock of what we need, and what we already have. We have a pretty specific style, which is something like “Sundance Catalog meets multi-ethnic bazaar meets music club”, so most things we like are either difficult to find or on the expensive side. We are also conscious of the environment, and don’t want to buy new when recycled will do. Who knows, the next thing on our list might be re-purposed from something we find at a thrift store, or in our attic.

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