At Home Magazine Features Our Repurposed Furniture

April 15th, 2011

This month’s print and online editions of At Home Magazine featured our repurposed furniture in an article entitled “The Sum of Its Parts.”

Our furniture is featured on page 14…you can read a copy of the magazine online, or read the text of the article below.

Broken picture frames? Light fixtures that don’t light? Table missing a leg? Bring it on, scott Phillips says

In addition to antiques and the like, Finders Keepers owner Joyce Anderson sells furniture crafted by her son-in-law, deputy state controller Scott Phillips, and aside from being affordable, the pieces are wholly unique.

That’s because Scott uses sad or broken parts taken from different items, puts them together and creates something stunning — chunks of picture frames, dressers and bookshelves might become a hutch that costs $250, for instance. A wood worker for two decades, “it’s how I unwind from the office,” he said.

And what started as a hobby has grown to an operation that has outgrown an Explorer and truck to a trailer, which Phillips loads in Boise and unloads at Finders Keepers once a month.

“Our input costs are very low. I buy things that are essentially ready to be discarded and I turn them into different things,” he said, adding that he also scouts out mistinted paint in “promising” colors and isn’t above remixing colors once he gets the bucket home.

“His prices are just outrageously low; I don’t know how he does it and makes any money. (But) he can sell cheap because he keeps his costs cheap,” Anderson said.

And Phillips doesn’t stop at furniture. He also refurbs light fixtures, combining elements from his collection of “donor parts” to create fixtures like the red chandelier seen here. And the best part? He accepts custom orders.

Though he has been known to go neutral, he also works with trendy colors like turquoise, red and avocado green, and his choices are influenced by the season — winter means darker and moodier shades, and an approaching spring inspires bright and vibrant shades.

Though playing the furniture version of Dr. Frankenstein is just a hobby now, it just might become his full-time profession someday. It’s a thought that’s crossed his mind before.
 
“Don’t tease me — I’d love to,” he said.

Article reprinted from At Home magazine, a publication of the Idaho State Journal.