This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

Coast craftsmen turn almo. anything into tables, couches
By KEN FINK
THE SUN HERALD
■	For years, John DesAngles’ couch rested and rotted in Joe’s Bayou, a muddy crab-invested slough that runs through Bay St. Louis into the mouth of the Jourdan River.
It didn’t start out as a couch. But once DesAngles got a look at the rotting skiff, it had only one destination — his living room in his home in Fenton, near Kiln.
“Everybody loves the boat,” he said. “They’re fascinated with it. We can sit nine people half. . . comfortable.” DesAngles bought the boat, rotted and decayed, from Ernest Poillion, whose father, Henry, built the skiff in 1961.
The old boat was even the topic of a sermon delivered by the Rev. Nathan Barber, who noted that old boats, like souls, should . never rot away without a use.
DesAngles also made a dining table from the cypress stem of a 100-year-old shrimp boat.
“This stuff is everywhere,” DesAngles said. "Sometimes you have to pay for it, sometimes you don’t. You ' might already have it.”
. DesAngles said he M paid $300 for the skiff.
DesAngles isn’t the only decorator on the Coast who steers clear of traditional home furnishing stores. He and others go to the beach, the marsh, the woods and anywhere else to find something that can be used as a couch, table, bed, shelves or cabinets.
Creative scavengers find it, they assemble it, they paint it. It can come from a junk yard, the bottom of a bayou, the top of a tree, from the attic, the hardware store or the dump.
If it looks good, hang it. If it feels good, sit on it. If it fits, use it.
Ideas come from the minds of the creative. But you don’t have to be an artist.
This stuff is everywhere. Sometimes you have to pay for it, sometimes you don't. You might already have it
John
DesAngles