Photos by Paul Flessland
If you don’t love shopping at the store, take a look outside your own front door. That’s what Kelly Binfet does during cleanup week each year. Binfet is the queen of curb shopping. Many of the furniture pieces in her home, Binfet has picked from the side of the road, but you’d never know it. While giving Design & Living a tour, Binfet showed us all of her finds.
This chair was from one of Binfet’s neighbors who set it on the curb during cleanup week. Meanwhile, she found the stool and metal bin on the side of the road.
Growing up, Binfet’s parents would find things on the curb. At the time, Binfet did not share her parent’s passion for repurposing and sometimes found it to be a bit embarrassing. However, that all changed when Binfet started a family of her own.
“When we first got married, we didn’t have a lot of money. My husband’s pretty handy, and I like to repurpose stuff and I like old and thrift store stuff,” Binfet said.
Now Binfet takes her own kids picking, and sometimes even her nieces and nephews.
Binfet found this wheelbarrow and repurposed it as a planter for in her garden.
Binfet has even found birdhouses to decorate her fence posts.
An orange handle added interest to the wooden fence in the backyard.
Binfet uses this found green chair at her kitchen table.
Although she has dabbled in selling repurposed furniture and decor, Binfet is the community outreach coordinator for the Ronald McDonald House here in Fargo. In their spare time, Binfet and her husband like to work on projects around their house. Binfet’s husband has even transformed one of Binfet’s curbside finds into an extension of their kitchen cabinets.
Binfet and her husband have not only refurbished furniture, but also their home itself. For example, they removed the doors of their upper kitchen cupboards to showcase Binfet’s teapot collection.
Binfet also collects mason jars and used them as a centerpiece for her dining room table.