Thrifty mom: Up-cycling old furniture can give rooms new looks for low prices

DENVER — I buy furniture at thrift stores, but I've never actually bought something that needed a lot of work. So for this latest "thrifty mom" segment, I went to an expert at the Denver Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  Alice Goble is the volunteer programs manager and marketing lead for ReStore. She scouts the store for furniture that she and her husband can refurbish, a practice known as "up-cycling."

"We do it for fun and as a creative outlet, says Goble."

Alice has an eye for items with potential, as I saw from some of the before and after pictures of items she's up-cycled.

"This table had lots and lots of coats of different colored paint on it, but we could tell that it likely had some pretty wood underneath all that paint," she says, while showing off a table she sanded and re-glazed.

She even finds items that other workers at the store would throw in the recycling pile. A metal stool marked for recycling will now find a new place in Alice's home as a tufted chair.

Up-cycling doesn't have to take a look of time.  One of the easiest projects, Alice says, is putting a new seat on a chair.

"You just pop the chair seat off, take the staples out, replace it with new foam, drape it with the new fabric and use a staple gun to staple it nice and firmly."

Do that 4 times – and your dining room has a fresh look… on thrift store prices.