Upcycled Furniture

We believe buying quality upcycled furniture that lasts a lifetime is the best next step for eco-conscious customers. We live in a world where people are constantly buying new things and then chucking them out once something better comes along.

At Scaramanga, we repurpose unwanted old, antique and vintage items to make it easy for our customers to buy pre-used items from our collection of upcycled furniture. We want to live in a world where everything can be used again and again, whether it be an old fire-bucket repurposed as a plant pot, an old cooking pot turned into a fire pit or an old brick mould now used as a jewellery box. At Scaramanga, we put the planet first and that’s why our growing collection of upcycled furniture combines innovation, sustainability and practicality to bring you versatile vintage goods for a great price.

What does Upcycled furniture mean?

Upcycling is the process whereby you take one object and turn it into something else. Upcycling can be done using a variety of different practices such as painting, joinery, sewing, electrical engineering, glasswork and many others. It essentially means that instead of recycling your old glass bottles, melting them down and remoulding them, you can simply keep the glass bottles in its original form and turn it into a light for example.

Upcycling is an innovative, creative and ecological way to re-purpose items and increase their value. This process prevents items from going to landfills or being melted down or being burnt, ultimately reducing carbon emissions. Upcycled furniture is a game-changing way for our customers to buy pieces that feel new but have already had a previous life.

What’s in Scaramanga’s Upcycled Collection?

At Scaramanga, we have a brilliant selection of clever and creative upcycled furniture that will make your home, garden, or commercial space stand out. Our collection caters to vintage furniture lovers, shabby-chic households and trendy bars and restaurants.

If you’ve been looking for a unique and sustainable coffee table then look no further. We have three innovative, upcycled metal coffee tables that were previously used as large agricultural barrels to store grains, pulses and lentils in India. Our team at Scaramanga sliced the barrels twice to create three circular coffee tables then attached a teak hardwood top and base. The corrugated metal has a lovely patina of age with both the original blue and green paint contrasting with the exposed metal, making it the perfect shabby-chic coffee table for any home or coffee shop.

Our Kadai Fire Bowls are fire pits with a twist. These bowls were originally used in India as cooking pots called kadai and were used to make communal meals. These bowls were made by members from the Lohar community in north-western India and are all antique and original. The Kadai bowls have handles attached to the sides which allowed meals to be taken off the fire once they were ready. Scaramanga has upcycled these pots to give them a new life as fire pits. We commissioned a local blacksmith to fabricate recycled metal tripod stands. Wood is then burnt inside the kadai making them perfect for family BBQs in summer or late-night fires and wine.

If you’re after a unique bar cart, have a look at our upcycled Rickshaw Tuk Tuk Bar. Tuk Tuk’s are three-wheeled motorised vehicles used as taxis in India and other Asian countries. We saw this unused Tuk Tuk in India on one of our buying trips, we loved its iconic colours and instantly saw its potential to be upcycled and re-used in a new and exciting way. We decommissioned the front-end of it, mounting it onto a robust metal frame, we added some hardwood shelves and polished up the window, buttons, and metalwork. This Tuk Tuk evolved from a taxi into a bar cart which could be used in any home, garden or commercial space as a drinks stall.

At Scaramanga we see great potential in a variety of old and un-used items, some of our best upcycled pieces are the most obvious adaptations. Our upcycled fire bucket planters are sourced from shops and offices where they were fire buckets that would have been filled with sand and water  and hung from wall brackets. These buckets come in various sizes with varying levels of surface distressing and hand-painted red and white graphics. All of the buckets retain their original paintwork and each one is unique. Our team at Scaramanga commissioned a local blacksmith to hand-weld recycled metal tripod stands so these buckets could be used as plant pots, umbrella stands, wastepaper bins, or whatever suits your home and needs. These buckets are perfect for vintage collectors and eco-conscious gardeners keen to give these old fire buckets a new purpose in life.

Have a look at our whole selection of upcycled furniture and discover the perfect new eco-friendly piece for your home!

What’s the Difference between Upcycling and Recycling?

Recycling is an excellent method to re-purpose unwanted materials however, upcycling is a great alternative that generally requires lower carbon emissions. We’ll show the difference in journeys between recycled and upcycled glass:

Recycling

The glass would be used for its original purpose and then recycled. It would then be transported to a glass treatment plant i.e., a recycling centre. It would be crushed and melted and moulded into new products. The new product would be packaged and transported to shops. The new product is then transported to your home. The cycle repeats or the product ends up in landfill.

The process of recycling consumes a lot of energy and items can still result in landfill however, it is a great method to recreate objects from materials such as cardboard, glass and plastic multiple times.

Upcycling

We have created small buckets from disused military shell containers. The galvanised 50cm long cases were used to store live shell rounds. Once the shells have been used the cases are cut in half to make two cylinders we then make a new base for one half and add handles. The result is a small bucket that can be used as a planter for indoor and outdoor plants. It can also be used for storing kitchen utensils and workshop tools.

Another unusual project was to make wooden stools from road bollards. The trapezoid-constructed bollards would have had a post inserted into a slot in the top and rope strung between the bollards to keep traffic away from roadworks on busy roads. We removed the posts and covered the holes to make a very colourfully painted wooden stool.

We have many examples of converting old and vintage items into new functional pieces for the home. If they had not been repurposed and would have contributed to greenhouse gases.

Upcycled furniture aims to give un-used items a new life and prevent products from ending up in landfills. Upcycling requires a lot less energy than recycling to produce new products and aims for products to be used for a long period of time.