The first thing you're going to want to do is to get rid of all of the junk. Be realistic. Do you really want to save that box of broken lawn ornaments? No! Do you truly have an attachment to those old lawn chairs? You know the ones - broken webbing and missing arm rests. I don't think so. How about that ugly throw rug that you wouldn't even consider putting in the house? You know what to get rid of. The basic rule is, if you haven't used it in a year you probably never will.
There! Now you're left with an empty canvas. It's time to hit the yard, garage, and tag sales. Your tools? A sliding tape ruler, the measurements of your space, a little money and an open mind. The last tool is the most important. You have to be ready to look at a lemon and see lemonade.
Take my recent visit to a flea market. My eyes went immediately to this ugly orange audio-visual table, from some school. It was a pathetic-looking thing. So naturally I fell in love with it. It was missing leg caps and seemed to be a lost cause. So I bought it. For three dollars. Neither my husband or the owner could understand why I would want it. Well, I saw its potential.
We shoved the table into our compact car and brought it home. I couldn't wait to get at it. My husband couldn't wait to get rid of it. First I cleaned it up. It still wasn't anything to write home about. But I wasn't discouraged . I got a can of red spray paint, a pack of foot caps, and I was ready. I took it to my studio and gave it a couple coats of the red paint.Now it was looking like something. When the paint was dry, I added the foot tops and - Tada! It was beautiful, usable, and only cost me three dollars for the table and ninety eight cents for the foot tops. I already had the red paint. I made the sweetest lemonade out of that big lemon.
