Creativity With The Stray Table Leaf That I Was DEFINITELY Tossing!

Once upon a time I found a really great round table (which we painted black) for $20 to go in one of Mark's RV's. 

When Mark sold the RV, he forgot to include the table leaf that went with the table. 

The leaf has been loitering around the house, too big to go in the trash can, too ugly to do anything useful with -- or so I thought!.  It was one of those few items that, in my mind, DEFINITELY needed to be tossed!

But whenever I'm REALLY sure about something, something COMPLETELY different happens!

That awful table leaf (it's laminate even though it looks like wood) ended up becoming THREE different cool and useful things:

1) The top of the Coke box. 
I took all the hardware, etc. off the underside, flipped it upside down, and it fits almost perfectly.  Just need to paint it! Or maybe I don't even need to!

2) Two cute little shelves just the right size to hold Mark's budding vintage toy car collection.
As I was removing the trim pieces from the underside of the leaf, I realized that they looked like little shelves!  So now they ARE!

After: Shelves!

Before:  Useless Junk!

3) Two decorative vintage picture holders!
These were the brackets on the underside of the leaf that allowed the leaf and the rest of the table to latch together. Eventually I'll find something cool to hang with them and use some neat ribbon but, for now, this one holds the vintage ice skates!  Aren't they fun? And FREE from a dumpster!  Try to picture the "something cool" and the "neat ribbon" for me until it happens!

Before:  Useless Junk!

After: Decorative Hanger!

For me, this sort of fortutous use of junk provides the ultimate in freesourcefull satisfaction!  Ah bliss!