Re-purpose with purpose

My new garden table

One could be forgiven for thinking it’s already summer here in Toronto, it’s been so gloriously sunny and beautiful. Which means it’s time to start rocking the garden. I’m extremely excited about my new outdoor table.After trolling eBay forever for a cool metal sign to transform into a coffee table, and being amazed at how much everybody is getting for old ephemera online (the problem with eBay in my experience, being  that it’s dominated by dealers who are fully aware of how much they can get for old junk from some well-heeled collector from Sydney or Japan), we found the old Simpson’s Sears sign with the adorable old-school retail script in a farmers’ field near Bayfield Ontario, that’s coompletely full of junk that we’ve named “the sheds” for it’s many weird structures, all brimming with esssentially crap, but we’ve been lucky there. And we also really happen to like sifting through crap. Somehow it seems more honest than just walking into a fabulous hipster store of pre-chosen crap. More like we deserve it for working so hard to find it. 

The thing about the outdoor furniture that’s on the market is that it is all so staid and beige and MOR I get dejected just looking at it. Everybody is so busy recreating either a Tuscan villa or a South Beach nightclub in their backyard that nothing has any real style. So we came up with the solution of re-purposing a metal sign, which of course can sit outside under the elements and only gather more character with the weather. 

The only challenge was how we were going to make this thing into a table as it would require some sort of legs or base to stand on. In my mind I had this picture of a sort of 50s metallic leg that came to a point, like a tripod, which I thought would somehow suit the sign and keep it light and floating. But where exactly did one find those? We had considered going to a metalworker and getting them custom fabricated, but then that would have cost a fortune and there we were suddenly going crazy on what was essentially an outdoor table made from a piece of scrap metal. 

But then–of course on the Internet– I stumbled across the work of Ian Maclean. Maclean is a metalworker in Columbus Ohio who sells his prefabricated metalwork, all of which is very stylish and affordable, through a site called www.hairpinlegs.com. And here is the pretty tapered leg we chose: 

Nice legs

This turned out to be exactly what I had in mind, and today, as we hang around the table in the woodland shade of our garden with some cool drinks and the Sunday Times, it will be even sweeter as I get to enjoy not only the delight of our re-purposed chic, but our hardworking resourcefulness.