Salvage rummaging and repurposing

Salvage yards make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I simply love the idea of saving perfectly good and often historically significant and irreplaceable architectural bits from permanent demise. And, when rummaging through a salvage yard, you never know what you'll find at any given time because, obviously, their sources are always changing. So, it's always an adventure of search and surprises.

We have a great salvage warehouse in Boston called Restoration Resources. It's on Thayer Street, which actually no longer exists (the street, that is), although that's the address.

Let me back up. Thayer Street did exist, but then it got turned into a kind of mini pedestrian plaza with no street sign or any indication that it is (or was) Thayer Street. So, if you try to find it and the map says it's there but all you see is a pedestrian plaza, well, that's it. So, park your car, get out and follow the red brick "road" until you see the storefront.

What can you find at a salvage yard? Just about anything architectural if you visit often enough. I love antique tiles and they are not an infrequent find. I've also been into old grates lately and, on my recent visit to Restoration Resources, just scored a beautiful one, a relic of an old estate in Brookline (a suburb of Boston). [See photo at the top of this post.]

There's also lots of mammoth stuff, such as the enormous $10,000 hand carved wood chandelier from the same estate as my grate. Also on hand this time around was a huge stained glass window, statues, pedestals and pews from a closed Catholic Church, of which there are (sadly for many people) a growing number in Boston. Still, there is something comforting, for me anyway, in seeing these beautiful works of art and devotion waiting to be reclaimed and used anew rather than headed for landfill.

And there's the tiny stuff. Antique doorknobs, hardware and so on.

Lots and lots of doors, the real, solid, decorative kind--not hollow core plywood. Corbels of all shapes and sizes can be found, as well as all kinds of lighting. Wrought iron fencing, wood paneling (not the 70's stuff; I'm talking elite gentlemen's club variety), large and small chests and cupboards, curious and quality desks and dressers, mantels galore (marble, carved wood, etc.) and many many things that I cannot even tell you what they are because I have no idea.

What can you do with this stuff besides the obvious, e.g., getting a door to use as a door? So much of this stuff is just crying for creative repurposing and with all the character they bring in their own right, well, you can essentially have a stunning piece of stand-alone art by reclaiming an old newel post (the substantial part of a railing).

Here's another example. One of my design heroes is Matt James, a British gardener who takes the tiniest, most barren English city backyards and turns them into oasises. The guy is brilliant and a true artist. If I watch nothing else all week on HGTV, I watch his show, The City Gardener, at 11:00 PM Boston time on Saturday nights. Anyway, he's another salvage yard junk-ie (LOL) and on last week's show, he found a pigs' feeding trough and turned it into a water feature (a rill) in the postage stamp sized garden he was creating. It was a stunningly creative example of salvage yard repurposing.

If you haven't already explored a salvage yard, try it! No doubt you'll find something, even if you don't know what it is, that you can turn into something beautiful and interesting!

Resources:

Restoration Resources, Inc.
31 Thayer Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02118
617-542-3033