Do you have an unusable, wooden cutting board? Turn it into something beautiful and useful

Wooden cutting boards and pastry boards are very useful in the kitchen: we slice bread, meats, cheeses and we also cut up vegetables, fish or fruit on them. However, since they come into contact with many types of different organic matter - and especially in the case of meat or fish - they must always be cleaned after each use. But this frequent washing and cleaning with various products can end up by wearing the cutting boards out.

Sometimes contact with water warps them; other times, cracks form or even some parts of the cutting board break off. At that point, continuing to use them is inconvenient and not recommended (for hygienic reasons), but it is still possible to use these objects in a creative way, recycling them with DIY projects. Discover some ideas below:

You can take inspiration from lecterns and bookstands to add a lip on the bottom edge of the board and place a bracing arm on the back, and doing so, you will create an object that support books but also tablets to use in the kitchen and elsewhere.

You could also use a creatively recycled object, such as a trowel, to hold them up straight.

Add a metal basket on one side (there are those who use old graters for this, but be careful to smooth out the sharp parts first), and here you will have a handy ladle basket hanging from the cutting board.

To make the stands for tablets or books you can also use, on the bottom edge, a piece of an old wooden picture frame, (which perhaps is even decoratively carved)! A little paint is enough to make all the work seem uniform.

Add a metal basket and here you have a vase to hang up wherever you like.

Wall-mounted pot holders can have many different shapes!

If, on the other hand, you add a document clip (aka bulldog clip), you will have a rustic clipboard!

Here's an idea to recycle not only the cutting board, but also any wooden bowls. Cut the bowels in half and fix them to the cutting board to create a wall-mounted holder to be used as you wish.

And with a pastry board, on the other hand, you can also use shelves and hooks, since there is more space!

Hand-paint, use markers, or even a pyrography tool, if you have this skill (pyrography is the free handed art of decorating wood or other materials with burn marks resulting from the controlled application of a heated object such as a poker): decorate this blank, wooden "canvas" as you wish.

By adding feet, you can transform the cutting boards into pot rests and raised trays to be used in a thousand ways.

Is there any idea that you would like to try using an old cutting board?