Recovering old chairs

For some time now, many cities have been experiencing real conquests. It usually happens on a certain day of the week: your neighbourhood, a peaceful realm where you live in harmony with your neighbours, is attacked by looters armed with old chairs, trolleys, wheelbarrows and bags from Mercadona.

Their feat: to collect furniture and decorative objects that neighbours abandon in the streets. We have christened the practice "The Crusades of the street furniture"And we confess, we've been part of a battalion or two ourselves. The loot varies depending on the day and the competition in the area but, if you're a bit lucky, you can get some fantastic rewards: an old leather armchair that will be the star of your courtroom, an exquisite wooden chest of drawers where you'll treasure sheets and towels, an impressive boot to store your thousand pairs of shoes...

But what happens when the spoils are in the toilet?

We recently hunted four chairs in very poor condition but their structure augured well for many possibilities. A quick search on the net gave us some ideas and, after a few tweaks, we managed to give them a second life in our living room.

If, like us, you have an old chair lying around the house or you've found one in the street, take note of these easy tips DIY and take it back to give it a new life.

Give them a splash of colour. If you apply a little paint on their surface, you will make a dull, dull and boring school chairs be the delight of your dining room.

Transforming uses: Recycle old cardboard boxes and magazines, stack them in cubbyholes and you will get armchairs and fantastic poufs.

You can also recover other waste such as cans, pallets (check out this cool copy of the Le Corbusier) or computer parts and create thrones as original as the one used to be in Lady Gaga in his Artpop, designed by Benjamin Rollins Caldwell.

If you have children, decorate their chairs with stickers, stamps, and fun wall coverings.

If you have animals, you can transform a couple of wooden chairs into feeding troughs.

And for the handyman, using cool fabrics you will be able to upholster chairs and with ropes you can weave stools.

You've got the tactics, now all you have to do is go out and get your booty. Are you up for it?