Skanska’s Jimmy Mitchell has been a strong advocate for salvaged building materials for more than a decade.
From Long Beach to Boston, a new generation of organizations has grown up around the deconstruction of buildings and the sale of reusable materials. They’re often nonprofits backed by local architects, builders and environmental groups. Their aim is to build a supply chain that puts salvaged goods on equal footing with new products and materials.
Source: 10 tips on salvage materials from Jimmy Mitchell – Living Building Chronicle
Buildings – The former airport hangars are being deconstructed instead of demolished. Through the deconstruction process, a building is slowly dismantled to allow the building materials to be sorted for recycling, reuse or waste management.
via Journal Of Commerce – Edmonton project will utilize demolition debris for new projects.
When you live in a 550-square-foot flat in Los Feliz, even something as seemingly minor as a side table becomes a tricky addition to the small-space puzzle. The solution? A $25 vintage window from the flea market.
This crafty DIY fits a side table into a tiny nook beside the couch, leaving plenty of space underneath for more storage as needed.
The window frame was sanded and stained, finished with a new glass top, and mounted on the wall with simple support brackets. The final price tag came to $65 — but could be less if you salvaged materials elsewhere.
via DIY Side Table from a Leaded Glass Window Los Angeles Times | Apartment Therapy.
In the Music Box, furniture and floors and cabinets all make music — or at very least, noise — and the structures they’re built into are largely made from salvaged materials. The “Lookout Tower” is an old spiral staircase, set with pipes from a church organ destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The “Echo Wall” is made of vibrating steel sheeting and springs, with an attached horn made of copper plumbing pipe. The “Noise Floor” is … a noise floor. There’s a musical rocking chair and a giant washtub bass. It’s like a hillbilly Burning Man, and it is awesome.
Ward and Casal didn’t rely solely on Habitat for recycled materials for their house. A “sucker rod” from an oil rig provides support for the main stairs in their 2,200-square-foot house. The wood for the stair stringers and a massive wood beam came from a 100-year-old ice rink in Pennsylvania. Other interior finish wood was salvaged from a Pickle Barrel restaurant that closed.
The exterior of their house is partially covered with corrugated steel leftover from a ranch near Lenado. White siding was salvaged when the Aspen Square building was remodeled.
“Being a scrounger, I don’t like to see anything get thrown away,” said Ward, a carpenter by summer and foot alignment specialist by winter. He estimated that up to 75 percent of the materials for the house came from other structures — everything but the framing, sheetrock, concrete and roof.
“This house is a good example of what you can do with recycling. The thing that makes it cool is it’s all used,” Ward said. “It should be illegal that stuff ends up in Dumpsters.”
via From trash to treasure | AspenTimes.com.
Reclamation Administration: News and Research on Building Material Waste Prevention