Defect tolerance is a major issue in nano computing. In this paper, an application-independent defect tolerant scheme for reconfigurable crossbar nano-architectures is presented. Architectural features are developed to reliably connect local defect-free subsets of crossbars in order to generate a defectfree architecture. It is also shown how to further reduce the area overhead associated with this flow by relaxing some constraints on the defect-free subsets. Experimental results show more than 9x reduction in the area overhead without any negative impact on the usability of modified defect-free subsets.