recycling

So, recycling materials from a condo remodel is not as easy as one would think. We have doors, carpet, window blinds, metal shelving, shower doors, etc... and we've been researching and calling places for about 2 weeks now. Many places are picky about the items they will accept and some charge fees for drop offs. My hope was that we could donate many of the demo materials to someone that would reuse them in future projects.

Our wonderful friends Sarah and Marty introduced us to 'Rebuilding Exchange' a couple months ago and today we finally had a chance to check it out. While it was quite a trip driving down to the southwest side on a Saturday afternoon (traffic! ah!), we were excited when they told us they would take our donation of the doors and that we were more than welcome to browse their collection. It's a warehouse (somewhat like Salvage One or Architectural Artifacts except the materials they have are more functional/less decorative and they are a lot more affordable). They are a sustainably oriented organization that seeks to reuse building materials that may otherwise get thrown away and end up in the landfill. We were excited to see books by Bruce Mau scattered atop some of their beautiful reclaimed wood furniture. Other highlights were their extensive reclaimed lumber room, their sink collection (almost found a perfect vintage wall sink, but it was too large) and a built in ironing board cabinet (unfortunately we couldn't think of a good place to put that in our condo).