I Saved Some Door Slabs From Certain Death

I forgot to show you my fence!  I love the colors.  I helped the neighbor patch up his shed.

I saved a number of door slabs from certain death today.  Ten feet high, 1-3/4” solid core doors with a wonderful enamel finish.  I asked my wife Dana if I could have $50 to get some materials to build some storage shelves for the basement.  (She’s in charge of the house hold money)  after looking at our account and making a bunch of anxious sighs, she reluctantly approved the release of funds.  That’s when I remembered the doors I saw sitting in a pile waiting for their demise. I took them home, cut them up and turned them into a bunch of shelves.  I get great pleasure in taking someone else’s garbage and giving it a new life.  A new purpose.  Especially when it’s free! 

In our “throw away” culture it is amazing to me to see what is going into our landfills.  Seattle has what they call “transfer stations”.  Basically huge concrete pits about 12’ deep, 100’ wide and about the length of a football field where people back their vehicles up to and toss in their garbage.  (These are not apparently big enough; so two larger ones are currently being built)  A huge bulldozer pushes mobile mountains of trash into a hole where the garbage is compacted and transferred into a container that is then pulled by semi truck to a train yard.  There the container is transferred from the semi onto a train car (by a diesel burning transport lift) were it then enjoys a 5 hour train ride to eastern Oregon.  There it is transferred off the train car by a lift to another semi, pulled to a landfill currently the size of one of the larger mountains in the Cascade range, dumped and spread around by yet another bulldozer.  Talk about a carbon footprint!  That’s 8 fossil fuel burning pieces of equipment just moving our trash from one hole in the ground to another!

On any given day that I head to the pit it’s about a ¼ to ½ full with a colorful array of trash.  I watch one person after another toss in their unwanted items and think to myself, “Wow.  This is one moment of one day and this place is open 360 days out of the year!”  I also think “Wow, look at all that wasted material.”   Here my mood generally darkens at the laziness of people when I see what could be pulled out of the garbage and re-used or recycled.  But I will avoid the preaching.  (I do recommend a great 2o min video that can be found at www.storyofstuff.org I’m a big fan.  Great for video for the kids) But there is a big difference between what is truly “trash”  - i.e. that which really cannot be used again, and waste  - i.e. that which we throw away because we either don’t know what to do with it or we’re to lazy to deal with it.  So into the land fill it goes.   Old doors, furniture, plastic containers, usable wood, old clothes… You name it.

So what’s the point of my observation?  With a little creative ingenuity so much of this stuff can get a second chance at life to be something functional, useful and even beautiful.  

A couple of summers ago, I was involved in the demolition of a house in order to make way for a new house.  It was an awesome experience as we hand deconstruct the house and track every piece of material that came out of it to see where it ended up.  I am happy to say that at least 90% of the house was either re-used or recycled.  Less than 10% of the structure ended up in the landfill.  Bits and pieces went on to live in other structures.  Sadly (or fortunately depending on ones point of view) I was not an owner of a home at the time so I could not dig into the bounty before me.  A bounty of material that was ABSOLUTLY FREE!!  Oh, you can imagine the pains a penny pinching junk collector like myself was feeling as piece after useful piece of that house was hauled away to someplace other than my own back yard! (Which I didn’t have at the time)  

But now I have a house.  One that has endless possibilities for projects both big and small for me to practice my craft of salvaging, scavenging, storing and re-using what may be considered another’s trash.  GIVE ME YOUR JUNK, YOUR TRASH, YOUR UNWANTED ITEMS YEARNING TO BREATH NEW LIFE!!!!  O.K, o.k. I need not get carried away.  I try not to let my yard look like that on Sanford and Son.  But I have started a pretty good collection.

For what you ask?  I have a garage.  A small garage that was built some time in the 1920’s.  It’s pretty damn cute but ready to fall over.  Like a tired old lady still trying to look youthful with some blush and powder on her face.  The past owner put just enough paint on it to make it look adorable enough that I now have an emotional attachment to it. My friends, seeing the rouse keep saying, “Get rid of her!  She’s old and ugly.  Tear her down and build something new”.   But beauty is in the inside, right?  The old girl sill has strong bones and a cozy charm.  So I want to save the old lady and give her a new life.  Not just as a garage, but as a place that all can enjoy the beauty that I see.  As a guesthouse.

With this blog, I invite you to join in my endeavor to turn this leaning, rotting structure into a place I will want to place my guest for a cozy overnight stay.  I realize this is nothing new.  But I want to document my progress on this rehabilitation.  The exciting thing for me though, will be to see how cheap I can do it.  My goal: to fix this up on next to no money with that I find, scavenge and salvage.  I will track every expense and see if I can keep it under $1000.  As I pick up each piece of material and incorporate it into this structure I will be whistling, “Everything old is new again”. 

Ain’t she a beauty?                                   

JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE.