My dad is a “collector.”
If there is something he thinks can be repurposed, he tends to save it.
A while back, he sent me home with a rusty old floor lamp that had belonged to his grandma. He couldn’t bear to part with it.
I had no idea what to do with it. As I mentioned, it’s rusty. It’s broken. There are major pieces missing. And I can’t envision it ever being used as a lamp again.
One day I was moving it around in the storage barn (again!) and decided to see if I could do something with it to at least make it useful.
As weird as it will sound, I bought a stainless steel strainer and had Captain Cavedweller attach it to the broken top part of the lamp.
From this angle, you can’t even see how it lists to one side. I’m sure when it was new, it was a gorgeous lamp, but I think it had been left outside to rust and ruin for many, many years.
Anyway, I added some sealer in the bottom of the bowl. Then I gave the whole thing three coats of Rust-Oleum spray paint, in green, of course, to blend in with my wildly growing forsythia and mock orange plants.
And that’s what it looks like know. It makes a great bird feeder and the birdies like to sit on the handles of the strainer.
You never know what “junk” you can turn into something useful. Good thing dad always has something just awaiting a new “purpose.”
