Trash to Treasure

Trash to Treasure

By Judy Vandiver

©copyright 2009 Judy Vandiver

They call it dumpster diving. Have you ever done it? It’s my husband’s favorite sport. He loves going through people’s trash looking for some discarded object that can be repurposed and reused. Together, we have worked on quite a few projects refurbishing what someone else might have called trash.

Here are a few examples of some of our finds and the finished projects. This first one is an old table a neighbor threw away.


What you don’t see is that prior to taking the photo, we had removed layers of old linoleum flooring that had been nailed to the top of the table.

After filling in the nail holes, sanding, painting, and applying a faux finish with a gold leaf edge, we had a very cute bedside table.






Another project was the result of seeing a cabinet in a furniture catalog. Here’s the original inspiration.

Here’s a furniture piece we found in someone’s trash. Some of the drawer fronts were missing and others broken. We removed them all, sanded on the old dresser. . .

Our finished version included cute little baskets and decorative cloths. Much cheaper than the original.


One of grandest trash to treasures was when we bought an old farmhouse.

And turned it into a cute country home. (Don’t live there anymore. We like to redo and move on.)

But I thought about the greatest trash to treasure project in my life, and it wasn’t anything my husband or I redid. It was one of God’s original restoration projects. He took this:

And made this:

Isn’t our God awesome? Thank you, Lord, for all you do in my life.