So I finally got my junk collection into some pictures. Actually the time intensive part was removing personal information from the pictures, hence the smudging and cloning in parts. This is all stuff I got for free, or built with stuff I got for free.
This is the most boring junk I’ve got right now, just good quality lumber left over from someone making an addition that I have in the garage. No idea what I’m going to do with it. I was going to build a footbridge for the people I live with. The city had cut a drainage ditch in front of the house that makes it impossible to get to the road except over the driveway, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to make a footbridge that doesn’t go on top of the road at one end. You can only see one end, these are four and eight foot pieces with some smaller pieces mixed it.
This is a metal sign I got from my job at a gas station. They didn’t want it and I just liked the slightly retro look. I keep thinking it might look good on a future retro gaming cabinet or something with a cyberpunk theme. It’s mounted with a strong neodymium magnet I found in a junky “eco-rechargable” flashlight I found lying on the side of the road while walking.
A wire and solder spool organizer, made with bits of scrap wood someone was throwing away.
This is a child’s desk, made out of plywood, except for the legs and parts of the drawers. The drawers have melamine handles. I keep meaning to restain and varnish it. The drawers were stuck something fierce, but a little wax fixed most of that. The railings need to be renailed. No MDF or particle board, which makes it decent quality. I haven’t decided if I’ll sell it or give it to my GF as a gift, she’s petite and it fits perfectly in terms of size. She seemed to really like it when she saw it. Someone literally had it on their lawn with a sign that said FREE.
I built this bookshelf out of found wood and leftover paint from another project. IIRC, the wood was in dumpster. It’s actually the first bookshelf I ever built that wasn’t made out of MDF and didn’t come in a box. Gave it to my best friend, all that stuff is hers minus any books she stole from me. She’s probably going to give it back to me since she’s moving soon. 
This revolving bookshelf (fits only DVDs and trade paperbacks, really) was in a dumpster behind the public library. I had to replace all of the hardware that secured the revolving shelves, but it works just fine now. The only problem is a lack of floor space on my part.
This is probably my crowning “junk to jewels” achievement. My desk is made out of an old closet door. The legs were made out of new poplar 3X3s (this was before I’d hears about tablelegs.com from DiResta, and I don’t have a lathe) but the undertable was made out wood one of my housemates found and brought home for me (I don’t know where they got it). The top part is made out of some of the found wood pictured earlier and bits of the poplar legs that I sawed off. I put in an LED lighting strip and there’s a pole installed under the mini-table that dispenses cheap kraft paper for scratch work and doodles, but this is actually poorly designed because I have to clear the desk to use it. The right leg of the table actually isn’t dirty so much as I need to apply a fresh piece of sandpaper, since I use that to sharpen pencils more frequently than using a pencil sharpener.
The screen on the right was free. I saved it from a friend, and I tried to convince him to keep it and use two screens instead of one, but to no avail. If he wasn’t going to use two screens, I was, Not quite pictured is @fuzzyfungus’s generous contribution to my lagging system, a graphics card that was too big for the chassis, hence the bare metal aesthetic, but worth it now that I can play Bioshock Infinite and Mass Effect 3. Kudos again, @fuzzyfungus!
