If you’re planning your kitchen renovation, put a hold on the sledgehammer. There is kitchen renovation junk you can re-use, or make money from. While the satisfaction of demolishing your old kitchen may be a long-awaited delight, you may want to do it a little more carefully, so you can resell or upcycle parts of it.
Almost of all of your old kitchen material can be reused somehow…if you’re willing to find a temporary place for it, and have the patience for other projects. If kitchen reno stress has you wanting to purge though, that’s understandable. You might be able to list the kitchen junk for sale on local classified sites like Craigslist or Kijiji.
What are the useful kitchen junk pieces you want to keep for resale value or upcycling? We’ll explain them below!
Old kitchen cabinets and cupboard doors can be reused, donated or sold
This is a big one. Your kitchen cabinets, as ugly as they may seem to you, are still useful.
Cupboard doors can be turned into toy boxes, wall art, signs, shelving units, tabletops, trays and more. In fact, they can be re-installed into a new budget kitchen somewhere else, too.
The cabinet boxes themselves can be used to create new structures for pretty much any room in a house. But usually, we’d think of them as useful for buffet and kitchen island projects. Here is how one dumpster diver used kitchen junk cabinets, turning them into a beautiful, rustic, barn-door sideboard for a dining room.
Together, the cabinets and their cupboard doors can be used for free-standing storage units. Just add a bit of your own flair, and you can make a toy kitchen, crate, or something else!
You can donate them to charity, but according to this article, the date of the item matters, in case it contains harmful chemicals used in a certain era.
If you have the kind that are made of solid wood, they may be worth some moolah on the used materials market. Try selling them online.
If you take them apart, keep the hinges for a future project. Hinges are way too expensive at the hardware store to be thrown away! And while you’re at it, save the handles too – they can be spray-painted any colour for a great new finish on a new space or structure, any day (like a dresser, or bathroom vanity).
And, if you’re into concrete projects, you can try re-using the melamine or shiny-material-covered cabinets as moulds, such as shown in this cool DIY video (he makes a concrete tabletop with gold veins in it!).
Old countertops don’t have to end up in a landfill!
Take a look around a construction material resell centre like Habitat For Humanity Restore, and you’ll likely come across some old countertops. Why on earth would anyone want someone’s old countertop? Good question! Old countertops can be used for new renovation projects, or for new art, using just the material.
In this video, you can see how a DIY-er turned ‘cracked’ marble or granite countertop pieces into decorative trays. Scroll on this page, and you can see a photo of one made similar (with gold paint around the edges, so it looks purposeful and pricey). You can also use these leftover pieces as cheese boards or trays (they make great gifts!), such as this one.
In a previous article we wrote, we also showed how these countertops can be turned into mosaic floors or pathway stones.
And, if you have the tools to cut down the pieces to the sizes you want, you can also turn them into tabletops, like this photo shows. Think: desks, coffee tables, console tables – great accent pieces!
These countertop pieces would otherwise cost dozens or hundreds, so you’d be saving a lot by re-using the one you have!
Old kitchen appliances can be re-sold and fixed up for profit
Of course, perfectly fine appliances that are merely old and unwanted can be resold on the used marketplace easily (or so we assume). But there are ways to get your fixer-upper appliances to bring you some value. Some used appliance stores may take them for cash. Some scrap metal companies may also pay you for the value of the metal in the appliances.
A junk removal company would pick them up for you, if you simply want to get rid of them. But make sure there are no hazardous chemicals in them.
Finally, as the article above states, you can check if your new appliance purchase would come with a cash-back program, by bringing in your old appliance.
Now, if you’re an electrician or a handy-dandy person, you would know how the fuses, wires and machinery works in these items. So there is a chance that someone on Craigslist will want to buy an old broken appliance at a good price, since they’ll know what it takes to get it working again. You can try that first, and if all else fails, dispose of the entire thing using another method.
Save the kitchen sink: it’s not junk if it can be used outside!
Some outdoor spaces have a sink hookup area for those with a green thumb, that like to do their potting and such on the patio. It’s also great to have outside if you’ve got the BBQ going and want to stay with the party while doing the dishes, like this blogger states. Here is an article explaining how to make an outdoor sink.
Also, some crafty folks have turned these old sinks into outside play tables for kids – another great idea. Put sand in one bin, and water in another and you have hours of sensory fun on your hands!
To conclude: your old kitchen junk is not waste!
Save those old kitchen materials before you renovate! No need to send them to a landfill! If you don’t want to DIY the materials yourself, there is likely someone else who will want them. And, what do you have to lose by trying to sell them? If it doesn’t work out, it’s no worry; simply get them taken out when your junk removal team comes by. They’ll take care of the proper recycling and handling (at least we do!).
