I have used old tires in a couple places around my house. First of all, my roof tiles are from old tires. That's cool. And then I have my old tire bumper. As in "rubber baby buggy bumper." I like that my tire use is so diverse. As you can see in the first picture, this is a good-looking roof. Cool, right?

I love that roof. Here's the deal — moss doesn't thrive much on old tires. Those of you from the Northwest know what I'm talking about. I will blog more about tire roofs later.

But my rubber bumper is a different thing entirely. Let me show you what I mean. I re-modeled my attic into a fantastic storage area. It's still an attic though, and the entrance in my house is telescoping stairs. They close with a nifty door that is tiled like my ceiling so it is camouflaged. I have old crystal doorknobs as handles on the door.

Problem was, when the door swung open and down it would hit the wall and knock big dents in it. Since I'm super clumsy, I needed to have a bumper. One of the guys working on the house suggested that we try an old tire. My contractors are as nutty as I am, so next thing you know I have a piece of tire beautifully framed in cherry wood mounted on my wall. It still has gravel in the tire treads. (Please note that my housekeeper wanted to pull the gravel out, but I nixed that.)

Look at how cool my bumper is in the second and third pictures above. And I sometimes think of all the other ways I could use a rubber bumper. Are you familiar with chair rails? What if you lined a room or a hallway with a chair rail made of tires? That would be a change of pace. If it were in an office, you could use framed tire pieces for a bulletin board. With push pins. Or maybe nails would be better. That would be funny, right? I have a nail in my tire!

If you had a high-traffic area that was prone to scuff marks, you could put a tire bumper as molding around the bottom of the room. I really like that idea, as I hate scuffmarks around the bottom part of the wall in a room. Any more ideas for tire bumpers? Pass them on. And feel free to go crazy with tires in general. They're found all over the place, of course, just asking to be used around your house.

Portlander Nancy Ranchel is a self-described accountant, design fan, serial re-modeler, compulsive re-user, and blog writer.