Funky pot rack, bar none

TO others it looked like a small metal gate left out for the garbage truck. To Victoria Littlejohn, it was a design opportunity. She nabbed the gate from her neighbor’s trash and transformed it into a pot rack that suits her eclectic Burbank home. “I watch everyone throwing away junk, and I worry that one day we won’t have a place to put any of it,” she says. “How can we reuse and recycle things in interesting ways, rather than fill up our landfills?” The pot rack project was easy, she says. She put four hooks into her ceiling; experts recommend using toggle or molly bolts that can hold 40 pounds or more. From those hooks she attached chain link strong enough to hold the weight of the gate safely; hardware stores can recommend rings that will secure the chain link to the rack. Pots hang from simple S-hooks. “It took me an hour,” she says with a shrug. “I like it because it’s funky. People have to do a double take to realize what it is, but when they do, it brings a smile to their face.”

-- Lisa Boone