When we first got married, my mother was working at Home Depot. They had this gas grill on sale and she bought it for us. Sure, it was one of the budget models but it was nice and worked for a while. When it stopped working, we were also looking for a charcoaler. The charcoalers my husband liked were all several hundred dollars. He thought about it for a while and I suggested that we figure out a way to turn our broken gas grill into a charcoaler. He of course shut the gas off and removed the gas tank first, removed the gas lines, tore out the burners, and used the old lava rock protector shield as a means to keep the charcoal from falling out the bottom. We’ve used it for a few years now. It turned out to be a great way to take something that became junk and use it as something valuable. It isn’t perfect. It doesn’t have an adjustable air control and ash removal device like the nice Weber grills, but this is a good grill and we didn’t have to throw it away.  

Do you have anything like this around your place that you could “re-purpose”?