The Art of Repurposed Furniture
Over the course of our first year in business, Scott and I have had many wonderful opportunities to explore the world of furniture looking for new trends, inspiring new designs, and interesting new products to bring back to our friends, clients, and designers on Vancouver Island.
This exciting journey has taken us to the rural homesteads of Amish family farms in southern Illinois, to the bright lights of the Las Vegas furniture market, and to the big cities of New York, London and Paris. Like children in a candy store, this journey has been tantalizing, exciting, and at times awesomely overwhelming! In the months to come, I will share with you some of the highlights and pictures of our travels throughout the world of home furnishings and design.
Over the course of our first year in business, Scott and I have had many wonderful opportunities to explore the world of furniture looking for new trends, inspiring new designs, and interesting new products to bring back to our friends, clients, and designers on Vancouver Island.
This exciting journey has taken us to the rural homesteads of Amish family farms in southern Illinois, to the bright lights of the Las Vegas furniture market, and to the big cities of New York, London and Paris. Like children in a candy store, this journey has been tantalizing, exciting, and at times awesomely overwhelming! In the months to come, I will share with you some of the highlights and pictures of our travels throughout the world of home furnishings and design.
Recently I had the opportunity to tour one of our furniture factories in Hickory, North Carolina to see the construction process from start to finish on beautifully made wood furniture and custom upholstery. It was during this tour that I literally stumbled across a stack of old furniture carts destined for their retirement. Looking beyond their flaws I saw the flickering of potential to repurpose these industrial and functional carts into unique pieces of furniture in their own right.
Often called railroad carts, these beautiful carts were originally used in railroad depots in the 1900’s for transporting trunks, and were later used in furniture factories for moving large pieces of custom made furniture from one artisan to another. Who would know that close to a hundred years later these ‘old furniture work horses’ would be a desired piece of custom furniture in the marketplace today!
Seizing the moment we had some of these carts shipped across North America to our warehouse in Victoria and began the design process of ‘re-inventing’ and ‘re-purposing’ these industrial and functional carts into creative, unique, and eclectic coffee tables. Refinished and in some cases retro-fitted with glass tops these furniture carts became ideal and funky new coffee tables.
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Needless to say, these one of kind, original antique furniture carts/coffee tables have all but flown, no rolled off our showroom floor at Lûxe Home Interiors. The good news is however, like all good classics, we intend to “Play it Again Sam!” Follow us on Facebook to be the first to see the new shipment of furniture cart coffee tables when they arrive.
Wishing you journeys filled with potential,
Darren