Have done all of those things in my relatively short quilting career! I did recover my ironing board, but used a towel for padding, some upholstery fabric and safety pins to hold it together. It looks amazingly good and it works!
I pinned it on because my DH is supposed to put a new top made of wood on it. I had a wooden top ironing board I loved - picked it up at Good Will. He thought it had asbestos in the padding, and took the entire thing to the dump and put it in hazardous waste.
He was probably right, and I went along with it - after all it's my health he was thinking of! But I do miss it.