SKIP SCAVENGERS
IF YOU thought that rummaging around in skips for interesting bric-a-brac was a slightly shameful thing to do - as well as being one step removed from rooting through a bin for fag ends - think again.  There are skip connoisseurs around who know a valuable piece of rubbish when they see it. They are not ashamed to dig it out, dust it down and give it house room.  In the hands of a creative scavenger, a bit of wood or concrete can enjoy a new lease of life as something entirely different from its original purpose.  All it takes to create a silk purse from a sow's ear is a bit of imagination, a measure of patience and some elbow grease.  If ever proof were needed that it is possible never to pay for a stick of furniture or decorative home item again, look no further than the successful skip rescues of our three resourceful readers.

Fiona  is a self-confessed scavenger who admits that most of her house is furnished with "recovered" items.  Her work as an outside caterer involves a lot of time spent in her van, either visiting clients or shopping around for ingredients.  Fortunately, this means that she passes skips all the time.   Fiona, 35,  says that she has no hesitation in stopping and inspecting the contents. The practice started when she bought her first flat.  "I was really desperate because I had no money," she says.  "One day, I was driving past a skip full of cabinets, broken furniture, old urns and even plants. In one fell swoop, I furnished half my flat."  One of Fiona's favourite acquisitions was a 12ft railway sleeper which she immediately realised could be used to complete her fireplace.   "I had the van there but still had to lure a passer-by into helping me load the sleeper into it!" she says, proudly pointing out her reconstructed fireplace, above.  "It was actually in fairly good condition, although the bolts had to be removed and it had to be cut to the right shape.  "With a lot of sanding and varnishing, it worked out rather well."  Christy Johnson rescued two concrete building piles - although at first she had no idea what to use them for.  The 39-year-old art lecturer says: "I was on an excursion with my students, walking down Old Brompton Road in London. I never walk by a skip without peering in and this occasion was no exception.  "I saw the piles and clambered in. Some passers-by were looking rather alarmed but my students got right in there with me. I think they thought it was part of the course.  "I finally decided that, like a lot of industrial waste, they had aesthetic value and would make perfect candle-holders."

Caroline Ward, a 45-year-old artist and designer, is an inveterate skip scavenger.   "Most of my flat is furnished from skips and rubbish dumps," she confesses. "I recently found a mirror in a skip with a cheap, nasty frame. I didn't intend to keep it - I thought there'd be something better at the bottom. But there wasn't, so I held on to it and did some work on it."  She fixed a candelabra (from a skip) to each side and glued on shells (from a restaurant), before 'flashbonding' it with metallic paint. It now bears little relation to the original.  "People often don't see the potential in what they throw away," she says. "But if I do, then I won't hesitate to haul them out."