Using the Small Bits
Tiny leftover scraps -- even 1-inch-or-so square or oddly shaped -- come in handy for mosaic designs. Adorn clay pots, bookcase edges or plant stands, using granite fragments as organic gemstones, mortar for the glue and grout to fill the spaces in between. Create a pieced-together tabletop over plywood, using mortar and grout.
Home Improvement Ideas
Granite remnants can add aesthetic and monetary value to your home. Cut rectangular pieces to form a subway-tile-style backsplash around the bathroom sink or kitchen counters -- square pieces work too. Add granite details when tiling a shower surround or use granite squares to form a shower pan. If your future renovation plans include installing hardwood floors, keep the remnants to use as edging, a border or for medallion insets -- remedy any height difference with a leveling compound or floor mud.
Table Making
A relatively large granite slab can become a tabletop when you pair it with a good-looking base, such as one salvaged from an old glass or tile table. Craft a rustic coffee table or end tables using stumps for legs, or an ornate antique sewing-machine table as the base. Or, go for a more elaborate effect by using a curvy iron base or a modern zigzagged metal one. As with a glass tabletop, beveled edges offer an attractive and safe finish. Again like glass, the weight of a granite top keeps it steady and in place, as long as it's only about one-third bigger than the base's surface area -- the less the tabletop overhangs, the more stable it is; glue or screw a 1-inch plywood sub-top to the base, if needed.
Things to Craft
Granite squares make ideal coasters, trivets, cheese servers or pastry boards -- for your home and as gifts for friends. If you have to cut the stone slabs or tiles to size, do so using a tile saw, score-and-snap tile cutter, or scoring tool and tile nippers, depending on the material's thickness. Other smallish items to craft from granite bits include candle plates, bookends -- glue slabs together for more weight -- and decorative outdoor objects such as stepping stones or a water feature with stacked, irregularly shaped slabs.
Don't Toss Them, Sell Them
If you don't plan to repurpose it, approach or email contractors to see if they're interested in dickering over your stone hoard, or place a classified ad to try to sell it -- chances are someone will be happy to take the material off your hands at a reasonable price. Provide measurements and pictures to help initiate a sale. If it doesn't sell -- or if you prefer to give it away -- donate the scrap to a secondhand-building-supplies outlet to keep it out of the landfill.
The Drip Cap
- No matter what you used your original granite for -- maybe countertops or flooring -- likely it wasn't cheap.
- If you have to cut the stone slabs or tiles to size, do so using a tile saw, score-and-snap tile cutter, or scoring tool and tile nippers, depending on the material's thickness.
- Other smallish items to craft from granite bits include candle plates, bookends -- glue slabs together for more weight -- and decorative outdoor objects such as stepping stones or a water feature with stacked, irregularly shaped slabs.
- If you don't plan to repurpose it, approach or email contractors to see if they're interested in dickering over your stone hoard, or place a classified ad to try to sell it -- chances are someone will be happy to take the material off your hands at a reasonable price.
- Provide measurements and pictures to help initiate a sale.