Five years ago Maree Robinson found herself a solo Mum with two young boys, on a benefit and with little money.
“I moved in to this rented house with a couch, six teaspoons and some whiteware,” she says.
“I didn’t have a lot of money so decided I had to be creative. If I could not afford to buy expensive things, I would make things which nobody else had. I would make a point of difference.”
Her decision led her on a journey with TradeMe, inorganic collections and bartering with friends and family to furnish her Howick home.
“I always choose the cheapest options,” she says.
She found an old door and base which her dad reinforced with a rail each side resulting in a substantial living room coffee table.
She wanted it to still look like a door, so she found an old knob handle and put it back on the table top where the door handle used to be.
An oak china cabinet, vintage ’50s or ’60s, drew horror from her parents when she decided to sand down the oak and paint it. The cabinet now sports a bright scarlet finish with pink trimming around the edges including the dividers in the glass doors.
“My parents were horrified; that it was sacrilege to paint the oak. But I kept painting until I decided I liked the finish.”
A Russian Capatob fridge, price $1.50, sits in the kitchen. But it reveals a surprise because the interior is filled with Maree’s office filing and the freezer compartment contains her gift ribbons.
Her dad removed the motor and painted the fridge exterior a “retro sea green”. An NCR cash register, which cost $1, takes pride of place on the kitchen bench and with a quick ping reveals felted compartments filled with cutlery.
One of her commercial ventures is to convert container tins which stored old icons such as Edmonds baking powder into clocks.
A simple timing mechanism is attached to the lid.
Tins adorning her kitchen at the moment include a Nestle Milo (W T Herron), Glaxo milk food (1960) which tells the mums that it “builds bonny babies” and offers advice for baby to consume orange juice when two weeks old.
“Sometimes I can get three tins for $1. I try to get them as retro as possible.”
Maree has considerable nostalgia for childhood family holidays camping in a caravan.
“A lot of it is nostalgia for me – the days when we made sleeping bags.”
She has covered cushions with old souvenir tea towels – “like they used to have in old caravans”.
The glass milk bottle – or rather the plastic holder it used to be placed in at the front gate – comes into its own as a holder for oil, salt and sauce bottles.
She has sanded down and painted a printing compositor’s lead tray white (going back to pre-computer days in the printing industry) and mounted a range of photos in the compartments.
Old sewing patterns are mounted and framed on a living room wall.
In the bedroom a wall hanging features three crucifixion crosses cut out of glass mounted on a wooden backing. Surrounding the crosses is a mosaic of crockery fragments.
“I collected some old teacups and plates and bashed them with a hammer, then stuck them on the wood backing,” she says.
Maree’s bedroom evokes nostalgia. She recovered an old eiderdown in pink patchwork patterns.
An antique fire surround, found for $1 with a built-in shelf and nooks and crannies, holds Maree’s treasures, such as the bear she has had since she was six weeks old and which she has named her hand-craft business after, The Pink Bear.
“I wanted the room to look vintage and I saw the surround on TradeMe.
“I painted it white with a distressed finish and the little shelves were a natural place for them [her pink bear and teddy from her earliest childhood].”
Where do so many practical yet zany uses for items long past their traditional use-by date come from?
“I am all for the Kiwi DIY thing,” she says. “I try to instil in my kids the fact that we don’t have to have everything new.
“A few years ago I had a picture framed and the framer taught me that whatever you do if you are learning, you should put it on the wall anyway and you can always change it. But you should be proud of what you do. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
So every year Maree sets a task of learning a new skill. This year it will be screen printing.
Last year was the creation of The Pink Bear hand-craft venture after her mum taught her to sew. And the year before it was potting and knitting.
“I needed warm things for my bed so I knitted squares for a cover.”
Maree says she has taken to keeping a journal beside her bed for when she thinks of things.
“Being a solo mum, there’s not a lot of time for thought during the day. It’s only when you stop and relax that you think of things to use. I see things and think ‘that’s cheap, what can I make of that?’ And people will offer me things.”
Such as:
• The Mormon church pew on the front verandah.
• Fabric is kept in “an old school suitcase from my Nana”.
• A suburban metal mailbox, ideal for stacking DVDs.
• A tea trolley, cost $5, to hold the DVD player.
• A compartment of a unit holding the television was missing a handle. So Maree used an old-fashion hand-basin screw tap.
• A dial-up black telephone is ornamentation for the living room wall.
• The ’50s radiogram still works for Maree who enjoys playing her old vinyl records.
• A stack of old suitcases in the hallway – perfect for storing the children’s shoes.
• Pictures are mounted in old wooden window frames.
