Episode 5 Money for Nothing

Oh, now, I like the look of your rubbish.

How do you make Money For Nothing?

I love a little rummage.

The answer could be hiding in the 30 million tonnes

of household waste we throw out every year.

I think that I might be able to make something out of that.

That's why entrepreneur Sarah Moore wants to get her hands on

things before they hit the skip.

That's...that's wartime.

I'm a passionate buyer, user and maker of old stuff.

And I've turned that passion into a moneymaking business.

I make new stuff out of old stuff,

and I sell it for a profit.

And with some of the country's elite designers and makers...

That was brief.

Oh, the potential!

No! ..she can transform her finds into desirable... Work of art!

..valuable... THEY LAUGH

..and hopefully saleable items.

Holy Moley!

If Sarah is successful, then she can hand the profits back to the very

people who had no idea there was cash to be made from their trash.

Thank you. I'm astonished!

Today, Sarah's in Altrincham, south of Manchester,

where thousands of locals come with their rubbish, rain or shine.

People throw away all sorts of goodies. All I've got to do is

make sure I get my hands on them before they go in the skips.

Sarah has special permission from the powers that be to have

a good old rummage around.

"No TV's..." what?

"No TV's..." remotes?

There should be something here.

Grammar police officer Sarah is on the lookout for two items

she can transform into cash.

And she's spotted Lydia and her chair. You after a sit-down, Sarah?

I love this. Oh, thank you. Have you had it for long?

I've had it for a long time, yes. It belonged to my family.

It was passed down to me. It was actually my great aunt's.

So you've had enough of it. It's not fitting in at home any more.

Well, it's been in my garage. I'm quite sentimental

about these things, but I've just been trying to clear out.

Who's got the white cat? It's me.

She's like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.

I would love to be able to take it away and see if I could do

something with it. Is that... Would that be all right?

That would be wonderful. It really would.

Thank you so much for letting me have that.

Thank you. Really nice to have met you. And you.

Sarah certainly seems pleased with her jolly green armchair,

but what do Lydia and Kate think will become of it?

I suppose, in some ways, it's kind of quite a blank canvas, isn't it?

Yeah. So... May be some really nice fabric? Yeah.

Just completely modernise it. I haven't an...

I haven't a clue really.

SHE LAUGHS

Such a sweet little chair.

It's got loads of period detail, lovely little cabriole legs, fat,

chunky arms and a really good look.

I've got just the person in mind who will give it

the real kick that it needs to turn this into a money-maker.

Anthony Devine is one of the UK's most talented teachers

and practitioners of upholstery skills.

First thing I see in a room is a chair.

When I go round to people's houses, I look for quality,

I look to see what I would do differently.

Some chairs look like they are almost kind of destined for the tip,

but if you see one ounce of kind of potential, then save it.

I suppose it is a bit of a love affair I have with chairs.

They're very beautiful things.

That's maybe the case for some chairs, Anthony, but you've not

seen what Sarah's saved for you.

Sarah's second find today will be one she works on herself.

Nothing to see here.

Perhaps Michael can offer up something of interest.

Is it dead? Is it not working any more? No, it works perfectly well.

It works perfectly well. The motor's very, very good. Right.

It's just that the blades are blocked.

But somebody who knows anything about it could do it.

It's in quite good condition.

I've never thought about taking a lawnmower away

from the dump before but... You're very welcome to it.

How old is it?

I don't really know. I would think it's ten to 12 years old.

OK, so it's had a good use. It gets serviced every year.

Yeah. So it's good. If it still works, so it's potential,

I may be able to make something out of it.

So I'd love to have a go at using the parts,

or doing something with it.

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for letting me take that away.

OK. Does it go backwards? This is not looking promising.

Don't have it on that, that'll... Oh, that'll stop it. OK.

I've got a new lawnmower,

but I haven't got enough room in my garage for both of them.

The old one works perfectly well apart from the gears are blocked.

Sarah does look confident that she can mow up some moolah,

but what does Michael think she could do with it?

I'm sort of quite fascinated myself.

Somebody with a little bit of mechanical knowledge or

imagination can do something with it.

You probably think I'm gaga taking this old garden mower,

but it's been really well looked after and the engine still works.

That may be so, Sarah, but I still can't see what you're going

to do with that other than cut some grass.

That's two items scooped up. Anthony will strong-arm that armchair.

And hopefully Sarah will get motoring with that mower.

I would say, on balance, it's been a great day here at Altrincham.

I've collected a classy cluster of cracking future collectables,

all of which I know will make some Money For Nothing.

Manchester is a northern power house of art and culture.

It's also home to master upholsterer Anthony Devine.

So my buddy's coming back and she's got another item.

She promised me this is a good one.

And I believe she is giving me free rein on it!

So I'm very excited.

Well, who else was I going to bring this little beauty to?

It's come to Manchester for a makeover.

We've saved it from a skip, and now we want it to look lovely again.

Let's go and see what he thinks.

I just hope he likes it. Anthony!

Hey! How are you doing? There she is!

Nice! It's good, isn't it? Yes.

Shall we get it in? He really does love chairs, doesn't he?

It's not too bad. No, it's good! Good sign of quality. Good weight.

Yeah, yeah.

HE SIGHS

It's good. It is, isn't it? Yeah, it's good.

I have had some ideas about it.

I was wondering about making it look like something else.

Not too radical, but a bit of a play. Yeah.

Because of the style of the chair and it's going to sit in a

corner of a room and the rest of the house might be all nice

and safe, there's an opportunity,

an opportunity to give it a little bit of something.

Just leave it with us. We'll do a sympathetic restoration underneath

and something big and bold on the top of it.

Sounds like this chair is in for a special treat.

But just how much is big and bold going to cost?

500 quid as a budget... OK.

..would be, like, kind of get it all done.

If it takes more, it's not going to be much more.

If it's less, you can have it back.

500 quid, you know, I trust you implicitly. Absolutely.

I know you can do something bonkers with it. You never know.

Well, I do know because I've been here before.

You slash things, you stab them, you spray-paint them, you know,

I just can't wait to see what you're going to do with it. Me neither.

You're deeply worrying. Absolutely. I've got this one in the bag.

As a trusted member of the team,

Anthony's earned his creative freedom with this one.

But will Sarah live to regret it?

Today, modern interiors,

they're all just getting a bit bland and boring and it's all very tonal.

We want something to be in the corner kind of screaming and

shouting, "Look at me!" and probably you would never sit on it,

but we want you to appreciate it and that's what we're trying to

do with this chair.

I'm really intrigued about what he's going to do with that chair, and

I can't wait to come back to find out if he's had a good idea or not.

A budget of ?500 for a chair which, when finished,

will look like...um...no idea.

I just hope that whatever Anthony does, Sarah can sell it.

At home in Sussex, Sarah has already begun the mower project

by having it taken to pieces into its many component parts.

Well, who knew if you took a lawnmower apart, you'd get

so many pieces? And there are some fantastic bits here.

There's lots of lovely nuts and bolts I think would make some

lovely jewellery but the standout feature

I think has to be this fantastic cutter blade.

It's such a sculptural thing and just looking at it makes

me think I want to make something out of that and I think

lighting is the best thing.

Lighting is really commercial, very saleable, and actually quite a

simple make if you've got something as lovely and strong as this.

So with the help of this off-the-peg lighting set,

I'm going to make a lamp with this bit as the base.

But before I can start,

I've got to get the hacksaw out to get this out of that.

Of course, the simple way to remove the blade from its casing would be

to just undo the bolt.

Money for nothing, they say.

It's hard work making money for nothing.

Before lawnmowers were invented, grass was cut using scythes.

It wasn't until 1830 that an English engineer, Edwin Budding,

patented the first lawnmower.

I'm pretty sure he didn't envisage

his invention being used for lighting.

That was a lot of hard work,

but that is every part as sculptural as I'd hoped.

And this bit, another part of the lawnmower.

WHISPERS: Don't know what!

It's going to make the best base for it.

I reckon put it in that way up.

Looks like a light already, doesn't it?

I've just got to clean it up and see if I can get the wire going

through the holes that happen to be there already.

And that's going to look amazing.

Sarah gives the blades a thorough clean with warm, soapy water

to remove old, encrusted grass and mud.

Next, in order to remove any sharp edges and make the blades safe,

Sarah uses a coarse sandpaper and a whole load of elbow grease.

Finally, the middle bits and bobs are given a thorough wash.

I'm just cleaning up these two pieces because these are

going to help me connect this to that.

I love the way that design evolves when you're reusing pieces

like this because that is a really chunky, lovely bit,

and it adds so much by putting it on there, and you probably

wouldn't design that unless you'd just found it.

Well, unless, of course, you're Edwin Budding,

inventor of the lawnmower, then you probably did design it.

OK, so on to the final stage which is wiring up the lamp and

I've got this fantastic lighting component and loads of

lighting shops have these now,

so you can choose the kind of bulb holder and the flex that you

have and even the colour, or if it's twisted, like this one.

And it makes a really quick and easy way of making a light.

So I've just got to get this wired up,

and I think it's going to look pretty cool.

So I think we'll go for the top.

Sarah's costs for the lawnmower lighting

are ?60 which includes the cost of the flex,

light fitting, bulb and also the services of

a qualified electrician to make sure everything's safe.

But will she really be able to create

a desirable interiors piece from a bit of old lawnmower?

Back in Manchester, Anthony has an extra pair of helping hands

in the form of his assistant, Tom,

who specialises in making furniture frames.

So what I'm thinking with this chair is quotes,

so the wise words of Winston Churchill...

Yes. ..British and all, icon.

Never, never, never, not Rick Astley...

..give up, Sir Winston Churchill.

Yeah. I like it. Maybe a cigar holder to go in the arm.

For extra... Extra authenticity. Yes, Churchillicity.

Anthony plans to use the paper stencils to work out

the placement of three well-known quotations...

Give us a V!

V! ..all spoken by one of Britain's most influential leaders.

I mean, this is possibly the worst job in the world for me.

I cannot spell to save my life, but these are all good words.

I'm all right with this.

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on 10th May 1940,

and the quotations Anthony has chosen were all spoken

during a time of conflict.

They helped to inspire the nation onto victory in World War II.

I've managed to spell hell wrong.

Hell is spelt with two Ls, Es.

Heel. See if you get through heel!

HE LAUGHS

If you're going through eel.

HE LAUGHS

Right, go on. It's a place in Yorkshire.

Once the boys know the quotations will fit on the chair,

the next stage is to lay them out on brown paper that will later

be photographed and printed onto fabric,

giving the appearance of the chair being wrapped.

The quotations are being sprayed onto the paper to give

a stencilled graffiti-look.

This is the al fresco part of the operation.

Has it worked? Yeah!

Yes! That's what we want, isn't it?

Yeah, that's all right. OK, good job.

Good job, me. Well done, Tom. Now, crack on.

The next day, Anthony has received the finished fabric with

stencilled quotes which was printed overnight. It's the moment of truth.

Has it worked?

So this is printed onto like a moleskin velvet,

so this is an upholstery grade fire-retardant fabric.

In terms of happiness, I love it.

I mean I actually, genuinely, love it.

I... Yeah.

We've blitzed the budget.

HE LAUGHS

It's always daunting because we have absolutely no room for error.

And I, like, sometimes we can play around with things but this

time the printers are already closed, Sarah is due in the morning.

It's going to be another late one.

Anthony is known for his last-minute makeovers,

but this is perhaps his most ambitious.

He's already stripped the chair, but has to build it back up

and cover it, making sure the quotes are positioned inch-perfect.

No room for error on this one. OK.

Have a look. That is a solid seven out of ten. Thanks.

I don't know why you gave me the job in the first place, to be honest.

Yeah. Yes, thanks for that, boss. Yeah. You're welcome.

So, this is elasticated.

And this gives us the suspension.

With the fabric secured to the arms,

Anthony now has to rebuild the seat and the back of the chair.

He starts with the elasticated webbing.

So, basically,

because the tension that I'm pulling this under, to get the

kind of suspension in the back, this rail is starting to twist, so...

It's going to have to be changed.

So where's the right quote? Here we are. "Never, never, never give up."

And if you're going through hell...

..keep going.

So here the danger is that obviously we'd have done this

before we'd have got any of the fabric on.

But you never quite know these things until you get them.

It is late. The printers are closed. Sarah's coming.

Normally, in normal circumstances,

we would leave this for a few hours to dry.

We don't have seconds, let alone hours so...

We'll clamp it and just work round it.

I think another famous wartime quote is apt at this point.

"Keep calm, Anthony, and carry on."

At home in Sussex, Sarah is busy putting the finishing touches

to the mower transformation.

Great, that's all the dirty work done.

Time for the last adjustments. That's straight.

Time to get this illuminated.

When Sarah took possession of the mower at the tip,

its days of trimming lawns were over.

Sarah's used the dismantled mower's sculpted blades to create

a unique table lamp.

The surfaces have been cleaned and waxed and it's finished off

with a contemporary colour-match flex

and a classic-style bulb.

The finely-finished article is certainly something to behold.

Well, I hope that looks like it's gone from cutting grass to

cutting-edge. I'm going to get some pictures taken of it,

share it around, see if I can turn a profit on it.

Once those pictures hit the net, I'm sure there'll be

a stampede of enthusiastic gardeners looking to illuminate

a dark corner of a room.

When Sarah spotted Michael at the tip,

initially she lacked motivation.

I've never thought about taking a lawnmower away from the dump before.

But it wasn't all bad news about the mower.

The old one works perfectly well apart from the gears are blocked.

So what do you do with a mower with seized gears?

That's right, strip it down and turn it into a lamp.

The lamp was snapped up by an interior design shop,

Sara Hughes in Marlow, run, funnily enough, by Sara.

I've got sort of memories of old-fashioned lawnmowers

which I rather like.

It's the sort of thing your grandfather used and you'd

imagine them pushing them along.

Our Sarah has travelled to Sale near Altrincham to show

Michael what happened to the lawnmower.

Hi, there. Hello, Michael. Hi, how are you? I'm very well.

How are you? Fine, thank you.

I said at the tip that I wanted to keep in touch, so here I am.

Here we are.

I took away your old lawnmower, but your lawnmower was still

slightly working when I took it away from you. It was.

It still worked, but it was jammed, wasn't it? Yeah, it was.

I have made something out of it, but have you thought what that might be?

I had no idea what you were...

Apart from a lawnmower again, I couldn't think...imagine

what you might have made of it.

Well, um, it was a bit of a puzzle and I did have quite

a long think about it, but in the end I've made

a light out of it and I've got some pictures here to show you.

Go on, then. I'll put my glasses on so I can see it clearly.

Your old lawnmower,

I used a little bit of it, and it turned out like this. Wow!

How on earth did you do that?

Well, actually, it was really easy because your lawnmower blade

had all the right holes in it... Oh, that's the blade! Yes. Yeah.

It had all the right holes in it and all the right pieces in just

the position to make it into a lamp.

It was really... That's your interior design expertise, isn't it?

Well, it did look quite striking.

Your lawnmower blade has gone on to be bought by

a shop down in Marlow.

They have all sorts of very smart things in their shop and now

they've got your lawnmower light, and I've got

a little bit of money to share with you.

I've got a ?40 profit... Oh! Good grief!

..to give to you for the old lamp made out of your blade.

That is incredible! That is absolutely incredible.

What might you do with that?

I know what I'm going to do with it because in the

'90s I was a bank manager, and I don't tell people that very often,

but we were better then, I think.

And I opened a little bank in the Royal School for the Deaf where they

had multiple handicaps and we had dinners for them and raised money.

And we opened this little bank and they all came and banked there.

I'll give it to them.

Oh, well, that is a fantastic place for it to go.

Really good to catch up.

Wonderful, wonderful. Absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

A total of ?60 was spent creating classic lighting

from the lawnmower.

Sarah managed to sell the lamp for ?100, which left her with

a profit of ?40 to give to Michael.

Well, I think Michael approved of my cutting-edge design and the

money is going to a really good place too.

Sarah's now returned to Manchester to see the bold makeover

Anthony's been promising, if he's managed to finish it, of course.

This chair, as complicated as it was, that was kind of our own doing.

We could have went simple but we chose to basically utilise

all the skills of all the staff here. Everybody's loving it.

Everybody loves it for the impact.

Yeah, so hopefully, when she arrives, she's going to love it too.

Well, Anthony was being really quite secretive about my little

chair when I dropped it off, so I'm dying to see what he's done with it.

I've left him 500 quid's worth of budget and I know one thing,

it won't be dull.

When Sarah collected the old chair at the tip,

it had certainly passed its best.

As Churchill himself said,

"There's nothing wrong with change if it's in the right direction."

And Anthony has certainly changed the direction of this old chair.

Covered in iconic quotes, hand-designed and digitally printed

on velvet fabric, this chair is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

Anthony promised bold and he's delivered. But will Sarah like it?

Hiya. Hello. And welcome to the war bunker. How are you doing?

I'm very good. Where is it, then?

It's... What have you done to it? Dare I look?

SHE GASPS

Hey!

Anthony Devine.

What an original piece of design!

Basically, we wanted to do something, just something,

you gave us a bit of artistic licence... Yeah.

And we gave you this back.

Um, so we went from taking the chair, we positioned all the

letters up, stencilled it all out,

worked out roughly where it was going to go,

then we went and stencilled and sprayed them all up

and then had it all photographed,

sent it off to our printers and then out she popped, or he popped.

This is a lovely transformation, but 500 quid?

Have you blown that out of the water?

Well, let's just say the 500 quid,

we owe another 20 quid just to the fabric printers. Right.

This isn't sounding... No, no. This isn't sounding very commercial.

I'm just going to say 750. There, I've said it. How much? 750 quid.

Yeah, a little bit over-budget but I can tell why, and I appreciate

the fact that you really went to town on it,

because it is very cool. Thanks. Really good! Love it!

Sarah seemed to take that very well, considering it's ?250 above

the original budget. Wow, that chair is anything but dull, isn't it?

And beautiful. Not cheap, because that's because of all that hard work

that's gone into it.

I love the fact that Anthony's had free rein to create something

that's unique that could have ended up in a skip.

When Sarah spotted Lydia dropping off the old, green chair,

it certainly had some history.

It belonged to my family.

It was passed down to me. It was actually my great aunt's.

Sarah chose to save it from the skip and allowed Anthony free rein to

do whatever he liked.

The inspirational armchair was quickly snapped up by Nick Smith,

a regular client of Sarah's,

who's an online vintage and retro retailer.

It's nice and comfy.

Sarah has returned to the Altrincham area to show Lydia what

became of the old, green chair.

Hi, Lydia. How are you doing? Hi. Nice to see you again.

And you, and you. Beautiful day, isn't it? Oh, gorgeous.

Um, now, last time I saw you, I loved what you were dropping off

at the tip when I saw you. I'm very pleased.

So your old...was it your, did you say it was your great aunt's?

Well, I thought it was my great aunt's but actually it was my

great grandparents' which was then passed on to my great aunt.

Yeah, it's got quite a lot of history, so I'm really intrigued to

find out what's happened. It was a lovely shape, your little chair.

And it was something that didn't travel very far, actually.

We took it to Anthony Devine who teaches upholstery and is a

fantastic upholsterer in Manchester. Fantastic. Oh, brill.

Yeah, so he loved it. I've actually got some pictures here to show you.

Brilliant. Would you like to have a look? I can't wait to have a look.

Well, you said it had a lot of history to it.

Well, he's added even more because your chair is now looking like that.

Oh, wow! That's fantastic.

So he took Winston Churchill as his inspiration. Brilliant.

He created all the fabric... Oh, wow. He stencilled it all himself.

That is amazing. That is so good. That's brilliant.

I love the kind of history link as well. It's fantastic.

Excellent, well, I'm really pleased that you like it cos as

a family piece, there is always that worry that we might do

something to it that you might not approve of. Yeah, yeah.

So, good news is other people did too, and it sold. Oh, wow.

Oh, that's brilliant!

I have ?75 here which is profit from your armchair.

Oh, that's super, thank you very much. Oh, that's brilliant.

I'm going to give it to an animal charity.

You know, that's what I'm going to do, definitely.

I've got one in mind. I am, yes.

That's lovely, that's really, really sweet.

It's a little chunk of money that hopefully will be useful.

Definitely. Definitely. Thank you so much for letting us have it.

Thank you very much.

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure and a lovely cause for that. Thank you.

Lovely to meet you. And you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Anthony charged ?750 for the transformation

of the old, green armchair.

Sarah managed to sell it for 825, which left

a profit of ?75 to return to Lydia.

Well, Lydia loved Anthony's Winston Churchill historical

connection with her chair,

and that animal charity has a very generous ?75 donation coming.

Sarah salvaged two items from the Altrincham Recycling Centre.

Michael's old mower became cutting-edge lighting, and Lydia's

old, green chair was rewrapped and covered in Churchill quotations.

It takes a lot of talent,

plenty of imagination and lots of good old-fashioned hard work

to transform every item that we save, but it's definitely worth it,

especially when we get to hand over some Money For Nothing.