I think it’s safe to say that few people get as much decorating punch out of discarded pesticide containers, old industrial signs and abandoned minnow buckets.

It may sound odd, but the decorating goes with the house — and the house goes with the artist.

Stitzlein, 39, and her husband, Nathaniel, 36, live in an old Grange hall in Baltimore, Ohio. They’ve repainted the exterior teal blue, converted the basement into living quarters and use the upstairs as a studio.

The space and light were attractions, Stitzlein said.

"It’s like a New York loft" — except that it’s in a Fairfield County village of about 3,000 people.

The studio is a riot of disassembled pianos, deconstructed appliances and unburied treasure from the old town dump.

Stitzlein makes "found-object sculptures," which is to say she takes broken dishes, bottle caps, gadget innards and car parts and turns them into something beautiful.

Some of her work is featured in "Trashformations East," a traveling exhibit of art from recycled material that will come Feb. 4 to the Ohio Craft Museum, 1665 W. 5 th Ave.

Her kitchen counter holds a large teapot constructed of two metal light shades and adorned with bottle caps and bits of china. The plume of "steam" was fashioned by Mr. Stitzlein, who does wire sculptures and paints when he isn’t working at his day job as a home inspector.

Mrs. Stitzlein is working on a version of van Gogh’s Starry Night using thousands of plastic bottle caps. She’ll start it; visitors to Winterfair, the annual arts-and-crafts show, will finish it.

Her washing machine is as apt to be filled with bottle caps being sanitized as it is with dirty laundry. Sometimes, the two mix.

"My husband walks around with bottle caps in his shirt pockets."

The Stitzleins’ recycling habit goes beyond art. Their furniture includes several items scavenged from the trash and refinished.

It goes well with the general feel of the Grange hall, which still has its exit sign and the original kitchen cabinets with locks on every door.

I don’t know what a decorator would call the style — mid-20th-century lost-and-found department, perhaps.

All I know is trash never looked so good.

Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.

jblundo@dispatch.com