It’s not every day that you see a former super­model struggling to load an oversized armoire into her SUV, but that’s precisely what you might have caught me doing this past November. After buying my cottage in 1994, I became addicted to prowling the streets of whatever city I found myself in, on the lookout for cast-off furniture. I wanted my Muskoka cabin to have a country feel, but I also just loved the idea of making something out of nothing.

I’ve become the sort of person who can assemble a rustic picture frame or nightstand out of an old pile of lumber, or transform a humdrum kitchen with $300 worth of travertine tiles and melamine paint. I’ve dragged home everything from Victorian windows to antique oak dining room chairs. I like to think of it as recycling.

After having lived abroad for 18 years—in L.A., New York, Montana, New Jersey and Australia—I recently returned home to Toronto and bought a loft around the corner from the Drake. Tuesday is garbage day, and I make a point of getting up at 5 a.m. to take Winnie, my black Lab–collie mix, for her walk, often armed with a measuring tape. With so many houses on the market and renos taking place nearby, unwanted furniture eventually finds its way to the curb. When I found my ’50s armoire, its doors needed to be reattached and its mirrors were cracked, but it was made of solid maple and—best of all—it would hold a lot of my loft’s clutter.

I ran Winnie home and picked up my car. Single-handedly manoeuvring the armoire into the back of the SUV was easy compared to navigating it—without a dolly—into my building and up the elevator. I had to do the shimmy: slide one side forward and then the next. Not a recommended method when you want to avoid scratches, but such a hot ticket item would be gone before you could say “garbage truck.” The fix was a snap. A simple on-line mirror order of $78.41, a good scrub (these old armoires can smell like socks and pierogies) and some door adjustments took me less than a week.

A good treasure hunter is patient, imaginative and willing to do a little work. Sometimes, you realize too late why the item was discarded in the first place—as was the case with my friend, who found some curtain rods for her boyfriend, only to have to call the exterminator because they were infested with bugs. The relationship didn’t last too long after that.