One man's trash is another man's treasure

While going for a walk around our neighborhood, we happened upon on this:

Except it wasn't folded out like that, it was bundled up on the curb, waiting for the garbage collectors. Scavenger that he is, my husband went round a bit later with the truck to pick it up and take home for closer inspection.

While it would no longer work for its most obvious function because of this:

we had ideas of what to do with it (If it's not obvious, one of the wooden parts doesn't match up to the brass bit higher up; its screw was missing. Also not seen in this photo, the round bits that hold up the umbrella were cracked and missing a screw).

I've mentioned before that we rent this house. We visited the house on our first day in town and really didn't know anything about our new home. Some how we managed to rent a house in a really nice neighborhood. The houses around us, and the houses along the road leading up to our house are all very nice modest-sized houses. If we had explored the neighborhood a little further we would have noticed that there are some VERY nice houses here (the mayor lives in the neighborhood)- a couple mini mansions and a lot of keeping up with the Jones's.

I tell you this so you know that our neighbors have some nice trash. This umbrella was not purchased at Target or Walmart. It is made of good hard wood and brass.

We have a couple Persian rugs and a couple textile-type wall hangings. The one with the fringe I bought while I lived in Uzbekistan with the Peace Corps. The second rug I received last summer from Grandma, who was downsizing her house and belongings. The two textiles originally belonged to my Grandfather, and later my mom after he passed. Over the holidays she gave my sister and me some of the textiles she had. 

The rugs are too nice to put on the floor where pets could defecate, babies could spit up, adults could spill (and we would). We decided that these wooden rods would be a great way to hang our rugs and textiles. For each rug, we (and by we I mean my husband) took two pieces of wood, strategically placed the rug, screwed the wood together (the screws do not go through one rug, in the other they go through the space between the pile and the fringe), and screwed to the wall.

The results are as follows:

Okay, the board from the first rug shown are not from the umbrella; they were left over from another project my husband had done earlier.

My Grandfather had already had some cloth sewn to the upper back of the large textile, so we just inserted a rod, hung with picture wire, and attached to the wall.

This is hung in our living room, the rugs are hung in our bedroom. I have one small textile left, but I am not yet sure where to put it. Once that's figured out, I'll be sure to share!