INTRODUCTION: Toward the end of October 2007, my brother emailed this article to me:

"Dumpster Divers Go Mainstream In Thrifty Germany"
by Marcus Walker
October 22, 2007
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119301515305566560.html

Given that our paternal ancestry goes back at least a dozen centuries in Germany, my brother figured that this article about German recycling indicates that my frugal recycling proclivity (?obsession?) must come from our 'Germanic' genes.

The article could have been written about me!

Dozens of pictures of the 'treasure' (one man's junk is ... ) recycled by me over the decades are online at various of my annual Diary pages.

One comprehensive example of the application of the FrugCycling practice to a bunch of that 'treasure' collected over the years is the 'Love Island' constructed by me in March 2006.  It was designed and built from scratch for the kitchen of my newly purchased 600 square foot, 100 year old home.  [ The new home is small because there's less area to be heated, cleaned, maintained and upon which property taxes are levied. ]

The 8 drawer dresser base of the 'Love Island had been on a platform raising it above the protruding gas feed elbow up against a wall of the old family homestead on 40th - it taking the place of the gas stove I've done without since 1991.  The drawers were organized over the years with the counter top corner pieces sitting atop them providing a much larger food preparation area than had been available for decades in that old 11 x 12 foot kitchen with the sink unit and 8 drawer dresser hogging only one wall.

The new 11 x 13 foot sized kitchen has a smaller sink unit hogging one entire wall between the rear hall and bathroom doors and built-in cabinets with countertop hogging the opposite corner too far away from the sink and refrigerator for efficient food preparation.  Not having a stove provided more flexibility in placing the microwave and refrigerator(s) but their most logical placement ended up against the wall where the stove would also normally sit - just behind the food preparation surface now in the middle of the kitchen.

That 'middle of the kitchen' placement required either a new electric outlet in the floor or something else - the outlet being needed for Sunday brunch to cook fried potatoes and eggs in an electric frying pan but also handy for various other appliances placed on the island within easy reach.  Rather than have some klunky extension cord along the floor, my solution was to run it up to the ceiling and then down to an outlet already in the wall that has its own circuit breaker - with a large L-shaped piece of recycled conduit allowing movement when the island is slid around on the one piece vinyl flooring.

That sliding is facilitated by creating a pedestal made with two metal braces (normally securing a large mirror to a large bedroom dresser) affixed to two 4 x 6 wood blocks covered by indoor/outdoor carpeting - the base is screwed to the pedestal with 2 of the 4 corner braces from a waterbed frame - the wide head and tail boards of the same frame sit atop the pedestal but are bolted securely into the base to support the other bracing and shelving that complete the framework for the entire free standing island.  Bolting those wide, former waterbed boards into the former 8 drawer dresser base also squeezes the two heavy duty corner countertop sections together tightly to make a relatively smooth, even AND LARGE food preparation surface.

The upside down and right side up pedestal pictures were taken while plywood and pressed board panels were atop the freshly unrolled single piece of vinyl flooring - better to flatten it out before final installation - it had been stored in a 12 foot long roll for 18 months since it was bought a month after the house was purchased.  (Even us FrugCyclers have to buy stuff every now and then. )

Once the securely bolted former waterbed boards were installed, they provided the sturdy basis for adding more lumber for shelving.  As it happened, the 'so called' 8 by 10 foot master bedroom of my new home was too small to accommodate anything but my computer desk and other computer room furniture - except for a bi-level printer stand which had been used for more than a decade in much larger rooms and which had been custom made from a former bunkbed frame and scrap plywood.  That printer stand held the slow daisy wheel, high speed dot matrix and ink jet printers that had at one time been connected to my computer with Belkin Data switches.  Since the stand was too large to fit in the new smaller room and only 2 of the printers were still being used, the framing lumber was re-cut and used to heighten the support framing of the Love Island so as to accommodate one shelf near the ceiling and another across the middle.

All that extra framing and shelving, along with the new 6 plug electric outlet, allowed for the addition of telephones, radios, security devices, hooks, utensil organizers and whatever else could be affixed to that lumber.  The net result being that my body motions required to access the kitchen sink, microwave, refrigerator(s), utensils and food preparation surface while preparing my meals was minimized to the point where any management consultant would be dumbstruck.  And, much better than the wall mirror I had to hang at my former home to see Brett Favre and the Packers games or the News on the TV, this new island has a large opening where I can see the TV while facing it.

So, in other words and to cut to the chase, this new food preparation ISLAND saves me so much time and makes so much of my life so much easier (we only live once, you know) that it was quite naturally prefixed with LOVE as the most succinct way to describe its impact upon me - I LOVE IT!