Destroying beautiful furniture in the name of 'upcycling'

[dottypencilcase]

I present to you exhibit A...

(reduced to125 from £175).

That’s brutal!

Maybe the leg had broken off.

I doubt it was beautiful in the first place, but it's ugly AF now.

If the leg had broken off, you could reduce the height of the other legs, use the spare wood to patch up the broken one, and use it as a coffee table.

That is certainly something!

I think upcycling should be kept to mass produced modern mass produced stuff

I hate to see antique and vintage pieces destroyed in the name of upcycling

Are you sure that started out as something beautiful though? Doesn’t look like it to me!

Has it been made by the woman with the bouncy walk from Money For Nothing?

I’m not sure that was ever beautiful furniture. It looks like something that would be in A super cheap range in ikea.

And the leg might have broken anyway.

I agree it looks shit now it’s been ‘upcycled’. But I think this one might be more an illustration of the pointlessness of glittering a turd.

Destroying beautiful furniture in the name of 'upcycling' ?

Really? you think this was beautiful before?/

Am I the only person who just has two pics of a blue table?

I've seen walnut, mahogany, never mind Oak which was french polished being sanded, Annie Sloan type finished original handles and knobs, thrown away in favour of modern knobs. Yep I grieve but brown furniture well over a century old is being destroyed.

To add some balance new builds won't accommodate dressers, sideboards, tables. So it's shop and chop

Who thinks to put a tree branch as a leg and add fake flowers is going to look good

Remove the badly painted paintwork and replace the leg and you could cover the costs.of repair.

I have a table that I bought in an auction.

If someone at some point hadn’t decided on upcycling instead of repair they would have been selling it for 5 figures instead of the £16 I bought it for. (It has pretty legs and was quite unusual so I Google image searched it after I brought it home and was surprised to find the same table in a London antique shop for around £14,000.
It is the same design and age of table because I can see what they have replaced a section of the table with (garden trellis) that should have been the drawer

This is disturbing but some prices would be scrapped without up cycling. So it depends.

Ha, I thought the same. I doubt this was ever a stunner

I think it is similar to the table I picked up from a free cycle site on Saturday and it is beautiful.

The "leg" aside, it might have been nice before it was blue!

The trouble is, very few people want brown furniture now, my mother has pieces that will have to be sold when I inherit them because I just don't have space or a house that fits their style. It's a shame because they've been in the family a long time but I can't cope with the amount of furniture my mother has in her home, I like space.

What's better, up-cycling and the piece of furniture still being put to good use or chucking it in a skip/firewood and buying something new? Environmentally up-cycling is a good thing, but are losing heritage. Chippendale/high end antiques, good quality mid century modern, and simpler pine pieces are likely to survive a bit longer.

Awful. I had inherited cheap pine chest of drawers that I painted white, was a big improvement in that case.

it looks like a standard desk/table with a drawer

I cannot see anything 'beautiful' with that image
Happy to be proved wrong, are there dovetail joints I have missed from the photo? are there indications of solid wood I am not seeing? Is there a makers mark on the back?

That's hilarious. No particular view on 'upcycling' but this is a cracker 😂😂😂😂

I wonder if there is a now permanently closed drawer behind the top of the branch or if it just looks like there is. I'd be worried about what might be hidden inside, forever inaccessible, if so. 👻

Some of our work is restoring antiques, and I can't tell you how many times I've nearly cried when someone brings a beautiful mahogany or walnut chair in that they've painted with Annie Sloan and then want to put some cheap Skandi style fabric on it that they've got online.

Okay, maybe 'beautiful' was a bit of a stretch in this case but who knows what lay beneath all of this ridiculousness.

I'm a purist and my heart hurts when I see a Georgian linen press or Victorian chiffonier 'upcycled' with trendy paints. I genuinely feel your pain.