Flea Market Decor in the Kitchen

HOW TO ORGANIZE WITH VINTAGE CRATES AND HOW TO DEAL WITH WOODWORM

Found a beautiful vintage crate at a yard sale? Looking for ideas how to use vintage crates in your decor? Need to preserve your vintage wooden box from woodworm? I have you covered in this post. See my great flea market finds and how I decorated my kitchen with them. And how I treated them for woodworm first.

Finally some time to play again! This time I played with some recent flea market finds.

Last weekend during the Easter weekend the flea market season officially begun, and I dove right in. And it felt like diving for real. It rained pretty hard the whole weekend and that definitely had an impact on the outdoor markets.

The vendors were fewer and not in the best of moods, but the competition of fellow buyers was smaller too.

I found some really nice treasures. Like two vintage wine boxes. I put one to good use in my kitchen.

But it needed a little attention first:

See all those little holes. They are the tell tales signs that woodworm has gotten into this box. I used to shy away from wood that was affected like this. But I have found a way to salvage it and now I simply point to the holes and use them to bargain the price down.

How to Get Rid of Woodworm

Stick it in the oven!

Yup that’s right. Heat the wooden object to at least 55 °C (131 F) for at least 15 minutes and all the worms, larvae and eggs are definitely dead and gone. Put the box (or frame or whatever) in the cold oven so it doesn’t crack from heat shock and then start timing when the right temperature has been reached. I heated my wine boxes (I treated the other one too although it didn’t have any holes) to at least 80 °C and left them in the oven for 30 minutes. I wasn’t taken any chances. Added benefit of this treatment is that it makes the wood thoroughly dry too, which is good considering I bought it in a rain storm.

So don’t pass up an nice wooden find next time, just because you detect some suspicious holes. Salvage it and use it.

Related Reading: How to avoid bringing home pests from the thrift store (and how to identify and treat them).

If you can’t find a vintage crate like this, don’t worry. It is super easy to give a brand new wine crate a vintage look. I dit it!

I like the wood in my modern – too much black – kitchen. It tones it down quite nicely. And it adds a little extra storage too without taken up too much space, which is also very nice in my tiny, galley kitchen.

I love wooden crates in my decor. In fact I wrote a whole post on how to decorate with wooden crates and all the tips and tricks.

Another find of last weekend where too vintage cake tins. I think they are too nice to shove away in a drawer somewhere. I think I am going to find a creative use for these ones too.

Another great score was a box full of ‘silver’ silverware. It was sold too me as real silver, but I seriously doubt that. Doesn’t matter it is beautiful anyway and I got so much of it for a great price that I will be able to craft with it without a guilty conscience.

Look at it, it is even monographed.

I think the monograph is an J and H, but I am not sure. Again, who cares, it is beautiful.

UPDATE: I made a VINTAGE CUTLERY WIND CHIME with these flea market finds.

First flea market loot of the year. I think it is going to be a good thrifting year!

So would you have passed up the holy box? Or did you know about the oven trick? And has the thrifting season started in your parts too?

Find this post useful and interesting? Do not forget to pin it to your favorite board!