Andheri store Tribal Route has ideas to turn your old kitchen utensils into creative curios to dress up your drawing room

Remember those old and stone-heavy degchis and kadhais your mom used to cook in before the dawn of the non-stick age? They were pretty much abandoned for good, until Nihar Mehta, proprietor of Tribal Route, and his team decided to spruce them up for a new avatar.u00a0

Nihar Mehta with the funky kitchen range at Tribal Route. pics/Rane Ashish

So, a lot of the stuff from your mom's kitchen has now been repainted and recycled to make it funky enough to adorn your living room. Metal kadhais (Rs 322) and degchis (Rs 622) can be turned into centrepieces with floating flowers or diyas, depending on the occasion.

You could use bhaiyaji's milk ladles (Rs 582, for a set of 5) to store knick-knacks like keys, letters and newspapers. The bright and shiny repainted beer and wine bottles (Rs 452 to Rs 1,822) will make perfect containers for that money plant you stole from the neighbour's garden. Staid buckets (Rs 622 to Rs 822) can be converted into washbasins, like Mehta has done for his store's washroom.

Metallic suitcases and trunks (Rs 800 to Rs 12,000) can be used as tables, while pastel tea ketlis (Rs 322 to Rs 522), milk cans with picture collages (Rs 2,822) and old biscuit boxes painted super-bright (Rs 3,822) can occupy prime spots as conversation pieces that you'd love to show off.

Mehta has been continuously adding to the Spreco ("waste" in Italian) collection of fun, recycled home du00e9cor. The collection underlines the store's eco-friendly philosophy. "Who says eco-friendly stuff has to be made from bio-degradable material? Everyday things can be tweaked a little to give them a new life. Since they are recycled, they are technically eco-friendly," says Mehta.

The team here is ready to personalise curios on demand, at a little extra cost. "We can add personalised motifs like pictures or messages to a product of your choice," explains Mehta.

At: Tribal Route, Cottage No. 18 and 29, Aram Nagar 2, JP Road, Versova, Andheri (W).
Call: 9967058847 / 48