from a pile of junk . . .

We like to reuse all we can. In that goal we've been able to salvage many items from our big house remodeling project. Whether its reusing it, recycling it, or - as they now say - upcycling it - we do our best to not send something to landfill.

Our house had very old plumbing (among other things) that really needed to be replaced. And replace it we did with PEX. I was leaning towards copper during the discussion stage of this with my husband - but it was terribly expensive at the time. So PEX it was.

The galvanized water lines in our house had corroded to the point that rust was collecting in our electric water heater and in the filters of our household faucets. It was time for a change.  As we pulled out the old galvy pipes I started to look at them in a new light. I quickly squirreled them away in my studio-storage shed in the backyard before hubby could throw them into his metal recycling pile.

Once we got the laundry-mud room built, I told hubby of my plan with the old pipes (which, by the way, he had forgotten about). I wanted to build a handy-dandy hanging rack for laundry (and occasional coats) out of them. I also had quite a stash of old faucet handles and old spigots I had picked up here and there with the plan to make a hanging rack for coats or caps.

I found two pieces of wood (maybe from an old clothes drying rack?) that I had salvaged from the interesting scrap wood that came with our house. They already had a few holes in them which I decided would be used in the overall design, adding a few more holes as needed. We had to add a few old bolts here and there to attach the various plumbing fixtures, using some heavy duty adhesive we also had in stock.

Once attached to the laundry-mud room wall they looked quite nice if I do say so myself.

Now, on to the salvaged galvanized pipes . . . I needed quite a bit of help from hubby as I'm not knowledgeable about welding and torches (not yet, anyway). Many of the old connections and fittings had become one with the pipes and needed some heat to coax them apart.

My design was pretty simple: one bar attached to the side wall and one coming off the ceiling. Apparently that was too simple and not really going to work. Hubby suggested a third piece to create more stability. Okay. I got plenty of pipe! 

Incredibly we never had to cut a single pipe. We were able to find the various lengths we needed in all the stuff I had squirreled away. We did have to buy the flanges for attaching to walls/ceilings and surprisingly they were outrageously expensive at our local hardware store (like $6.99 each!). But we were able to find some on eBay for $11 for 4 of them (one more than we needed but I have future plans for that too).

When we show people the new laundry-mud room the thing they really seem to notice is the hanging rack - and they are even more impressed when we tell them that we made it from our old plumbing. Actually, it looks almost like real plumbing. We added a leftover large garden spigot that didn't make it on the hat rack which people always like to go "turn on". Check it out:

We are happy with our recycling, erh, upcycling efforts! And I have many feet of leftover galvanized pipe still stored away with the plan of making curtain rods out of them. I really like the industrial-rustic quality of the weathered old pipe. And making something utilitarian out of a pile of junk feels really good. Thanks for looking - now go reuse something!