Growing up, my family only bought what we could not make ourselves. Mother made all of our meals from scratch, even while we were on the road. She sewed curtains, crocheted blankets, even made soap by melting down all of our soap scraps. My father had a wood shop in our garage and knew how to use it. He would produce coat racks, toy chests, shelves, desks and other furniture as needed. That was the seventies, and from those days, I have acquired an innate sense of craft. I love cooking, making stuff, and being thrifty. I'm excited when I discover new uses for stuff that gives them a second life. Hence, Papergeist. Granted, I buy new stuff too. I go out to eat...often. I'm not half the craftster my parents were, but I have fun trying. So, I was absolutely thrilled to find an (almost) complete set of 1974 Family Circle do-it-yourself encyclopedias at a thrift store the other day while on the hunt for records.

There they were, a quarter each, full color, in perfect condition as if they'd never been opened. As an avid appreciator of all things of vintage authenticity, I sat down on an 80's waiting room couch and excitedly paged through the first book. They were chock full of incredible pictures of the vintage interiors. Many projects geared towards the tool-capable husband depict the man of the house working expertly while puffing on a pipe, as the little lady looks on in admiration from her kitchen. To be fair, there were also projects where the wife joined in, like painting and working outside. In true encyclopedia style, they cover all kinds of topics, from building a room addition to regular maintenance of tools to make them last longer.

There are some important timeless lessons to be learned in the pages of these books. Reuse and recycle is an ongoing theme here. Old things get "modern" makeovers. For example, An old solid flush door gets a second chance as a mid-century modern sleeper sofa for the guest room, or a desk, or a coffee table. (Don't try this with an interior hollow-core door!) The instructions dare you to use a bright color for the desk drawers to contrast with the wood grain of the door. Beautiful! These kinds of projects spark creativity and pose the question, "what can I make out of this old ___ instead of throwing it away?" Don't have a solid flush door? Thrift one at Habitat for Humanity, an excellent source for used building materials, just waiting to be useful again.

"A bulky sideboard, vintage 1910-20, is transformed into a sleek modern storage piece by removing the legs and sawing off the bottom ball shapes", then coated with white acrylic paint and given chrome hardware and little doorknob-like feet. How unfortunate for that nice antique sideboard! I guess the birds' eye maple wood tones didn't satisfy the owner's space age lounge theme, and hey, that can be a problem. As this projects suggests, instead of replacing an old piece, consider an extreme makeover, not just a fresh coat of paint, but enlist the help of some power tools and see what you can come up with! Grab a pencil and paper, sketch out the basic shape of the piece, then erase parts of it. Add casters. Keep in mind that so much of today's furniture can hardly live through it's own life, much less go on to enjoy a second life, so it's best to avoid buying this junk in the first place, even if it looks hip and costs next to nothing. It's a trap.

Many of the new furniture projects in the books can be cut from 3/4" birch plywood and fit together by interlocking cut-outs. Unstoppable! I saw some HGTV designers use this technique to make a good-looking low-cost dining table. It's a basic move that many today have a hard time fathoming. All you need is a jigsaw and a router. The book's patterns are all laid out to be transposed onto a sheet of ply. Wanna try it? Download furniture patterns for free here and go for it. Skip the Chinese manufacturing plant and do-it-your-damn-self!

Get lost at these sites:
Readymade Magazine
Make Magazine

Buy the whole set of the aforementioned encyclopedias on ebay.