If your 30-year-old coffee table could walk – assuming it has two good legs left and isn’t covered with copies of US Weekly and empty wine bottles – it would make its way past the couch, traverse the piles of laundry in the hallway and inevitably find the bathroom mirror.

And after examining its chipped finish, ugly legs and fingernail polish stains, it would say, “I’ve really let myself go.”

Your thoughts exactly.

There comes a time in every piece of furniture’s life when the owner begins to wonder whether it’s time to place it in a nice, quiet retirement home in a dump somewhere in New Jersey.

But before you do, Christine Hudson, co-owner of Delaney’s Upholstery, suggests looking at your old furniture from a different perspective and asking yourself a few questions.

Can I paint this ugly thing?

Can I tear this baby apart? Take out the drawers and turn them into shelves? Cut off the legs? Change the knobs and hardware?

Can I reupholster, reshape, tear, shred and take 40 years off this piece of junk?

Well, if you’re dealing with a quality piece of furniture – solid wood, built to last – it’s worth trying, she says.

When Hudson and her sister Kate Fowler are faced with an old piece of furniture, they first look at the basic design – the “bones” of the piece, Hudson says.

“And then we make the whole piece unrecognizable,” Hudson says.

Take Hudson’s sectional couch, for instance.

Bought 10 years ago, it was her first piece of new furniture. A couple years later, she regretted buying it at all, she says.

“The fabric literally fell off of it,” Hudson says. “So I decided to remake the couch the way it should have been done in the first place.”

Using a chain saw, she hacked into the arms and legs of the couch and swapped them with the arms and legs from a discarded couch from the early 1900s.

Next, she tore out the back pillows, replaced the springs, tossed the particleboard, the glue adhesive and the fabric.

At the end, she had an Edwardian-era sectional couch.

“People would ask where I got it,” she says. “And I’d have to tell them, well, they don’t actually exist.”

Hudson and Fowler grew up in a big family – 10 children and two parents. Naturally, money was tight, so furniture was constantly being renovated instead of replaced. Both women are still advocates for giving your furniture a second – or third, or fourth – chance.

“We grew up with parents who were always fixing things up and giving them a whole new look,” Hudson says. “There was no sense in throwing something functional away. I see so many things – even out at the curb – that could be used in so many ways. I can’t stand to see things thrown away.”

For artist Jason Roberts, the first step toward refurbishing a piece of furniture is applying a simple coat of paint.

Roberts is known for turning discarded, antique and outdated furniture into works of art by treating the surface of the furniture as a canvas.

Tables are painted to match glass work by Dale Chihuly. Cedar chests are turned into Asian-inspired kakejiku paintings. But you don’t need exceptional talent to grab a paintbrush and fall back in love with your furniture, he says.

“Painting is an easy way to transform something,” Roberts says. “Rather than throw away some dark, 1970s wood cabinet, paint it pink or bright orange. Color is a good starting point.”

And the ugly stuff – the old stereo cabinets, the old- fashioned light fixtures, the scratched end tables – is a good place to start.

“Fixing up a piece of old, ugly furniture – the kind that can’t get any worse – really takes the pressure off,” he says. “There’s no way to mess it up. You can just experiment, take risks and go for it.”

Hudson and Fowler take a similar approach. Bright is better. Kooky can be classy. And never neglect color.

“I tell myself this all the time,” Hudson says.

“What’s it going to hurt to go bold? I should have fun with this. There’s no reason everything has to be neutral or traditional. Why not try something different before you let this old piece go? If it’s solidly built, it deserves it.”

edowns@jg.net