Skateboards, a fire extinguisher, an NHS filing cabinet… self-confessed hoarder Stuart Helmn has a flair for turning unwanted furniture and quirky items into sought-after pieces. Ruth Addicott finds out more

If you thought a fire extinguisher had one use only, meet Stuart Helmn from Middlesbrough, who turned one into an umbrella stand. A self-confessed hoarder with a passion for vintage, retro and antiques, Stuart has a talent for turning old, unwanted items into sought-after pieces. Since he set up his online venture, Resourceful Restoration, two and a half years ago, he has breathed new life into all sorts of things from an old NHS medical records cabinet which became a stylish drinks cabinet to a skateboard which was rescued from an attic and turned into a bench.

“It’s finding pieces that are a bit down on their luck and tidying them up,” he says. “I’ve always liked the idea of making things and finding a new use for things.”

Stuart likes a challenge and encourages people to use their imagination, such as the commission for an Elizabethan style dolls’ house bed. His ‘skate benches’ made from old skateboards and the legs of old school chairs are also popular. When a customer turned up with a fire extinguisher asking if he could turn it into an umbrella stand though, even Stuart was stumped.

“Sometimes you just look at it and think, how do I do this?,” he says. “First of all, I had to make sure the thing was empty, so I sprayed the water into the sink, took off the safety valves, unscrewed the top to make sure there was no pressure, then took it outside and used an angle grinder to cut through it – you’d be there for weeks if you were trying to use a saw – then it was just a case of neatening it up.” The owner was so pleased with the result, he called back and asked if Stuart could help them convert their horse trailer into a kitchen.

Most of his pieces come from charity shops, antique shops and auctions – Stuart doesn’t do house sales because he only buys a couple of items at a time. “I don’t buy perfect pristine pieces, I like them to have some use so they’ve got a bit of history to them,” he says. “There is always someone out there who’ll see something and say, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

One thing he’s on the look out for is coffee grinders. He has restored quite a few, along with treadle sewing machines, which he’s given a beautiful new walnut veneer. He is also passionate about the construction and making things work.

“I don’t like something that just looks nice, I like it to work as well,” he says. “So if I restore a treadle sewing machine, I make sure people can use it. The sewing treadles are some of my favourite pieces to do because I’ve kind of taken them slightly beyond what they would have been originally. I always see them in shops as props and they’ve not really done anything to them.” He ended up French polishing them because the wood had really high quality veneers.

Stuart initially studied law with the intention of becoming a solicitor, but when the recession hit and jobs were few and far between he started to put his skills to other uses - making jewellery out of old bike parts. “I’ve always been interested in bikes and taking apart and building my own bikes and I realised I had lots of spares like broken chains and worn out gears so I started creating necklaces, bracelets and coaster sets,” he says.

After a while, he moved into furniture, re-upholstering old Victorian chairs and giving a new lease of life to antique tables and art deco cabinets. As well as traditional pieces, he started to stumble on some more unusual objects - a pigeon clock used for pigeon racing, a compass from a spitfire plane and a treadle sewing machine that had been in someone’s garage for 17 years. He even picked up a 1940s bed frame – a similar design to Winston Churchill’s – which he now sleeps on.

Another item which caught his eye was a Second World War mine detector. “It was something I couldn’t pass up because it’s so unusual,” he says. “It was in its box and had all the tiny bits and pieces and was so complete I had to have a look and see what I could do with it. It was very scruffy and the box had got a bit of woodworm, but I took everything out and cleaned it all up. I want to find pieces that people don’t see every day.”

Stuart has been making things since he was a boy and still plays a guitar he built as a teenager with the help of his grandfather and stepdad. Prices for his latest pieces range from £5 to £300 and are sold on his website and at vintage fairs as well as Helmsley Antiques and Interiors in Helmsley.

The piece he gets asked most about is a record cabinet which came from a house in Chester-le-Street, where a family of doctors lived since they built it in 1903. “They had some amazing pieces,” he says. “But some of them like waiting room benches were fixed into the floor and too big to take and others, like all the ‘Push’ plates on the doors, had to be sold with the house. The record cabinet is the piece I get asked about the most and I know I sold it very cheap.”

W: resourcefulrestoration.co.uk

Stuart's items are stocked at Antiques & Interiors, 19a Bondgate, Helmsley. www.antiquesinteriors.co.uk