Greetings and salutations from all of us here on the Seattle field crew. Like you, we have also noticed that glowing, round object in the sky, which must mean that it’s Spring. This time of year brings more Salvage Service jobs and more hours spent crammed in the cab of The RE Store trucks. From the islands to the highlands, and places beyond, we cover a lot of ground to recover all sorts of materials around Puget Sound.

Just last week, we found ourselves in scenic Fall City for an aerial entertainment center removal, in Carnation for a pre-demolition house salvage, and ending with a pick up in Duvall.

Seattle field crew lead, James Taylor up on the ladder with the entertainment center

Good things really do come from high places – when they are pulled from second story windows and shimmied down ladders (safely, of course). What am I talking about? Why, removing a three piece, built-in, cherry entertainment center from the second floor of a house. The only practical way to remove this oversized item was through the master bedroom window.  We never said that salvaging reusable materials was easy. Believe it or not, the process went very quickly. Thank you gravity!

After our aerialist act with ladders, heavy cabinetry, and physics, we headed over to Carnation for a more conventional salvage operation at a King County-owned property. This particular home was being razed to restore the adjacent river. Our licensed and bonded salvage crews regularly collaborate on green projects with both the city of Seattle and King County. These ongoing efforts reduce government waste disposal costs and provide a steady stream of reusable materials for shoppers in our two stores in Ballard and Bellingham.

the truck loaded, tetris-style

Before the County’s demolition work began, we were allowed to salvage out a truck load of reusable materials, including: vinyl windows, kitchen cabinets, an electric fireplace insert, and other finish materials. Loading the truck is often the most difficult part of any salvage job. It can be like a combination of Tetris, Jenga, and Twister. However, the pieces are really heavy, have glass in them, and if they fall over, you lose much more than just the game.

Rest assured, dear reader, that we did load everything safely and securely. We even piled on more at a quick Pick Up Service job in Duvall. The final tying-down used our last rope. If there’s a lesson to be learned here, perhaps it’s that things worth doing are often not easy, whether it’s salvaging reusable materials, saving you money on building supplies, or playing a game of Jenga.

Notes and photos by Ryan DeSales, Seattle Field Crew member

What happens when you mix an arc welder, an eight-year old boy, and a handy grandfather? You found out if you visited Bellingham’s Allied Arts gallery in April, one of four galleries in The RE Store’s 11th Annual Recycled Arts Show. This year’s multi-city exhibition attracted professional and semi-professional submissions from a talented pool of regional artists, designers, makers along with a unique entry from Culver Bontrager.

2012 Bellingham Recycled Arts Show Galleries at Allied Arts and The RE Store. Culver (in red) at top center. Click to enlarge.

Culver’s welded piece, Mr. Bones, dangled from an 8-foot high hook, with articulating joints. He would dance if you got the whole thing swaying ([GASP!] PLEASE do not touch or dance the artwork, sir!). Culver started doing metal fabrication with his handy grandfather, Romeo Gonyea when he was seven.  Romeo has been doing metal fabrication for a majority of his life along with “heavy equipment, wood working, cabinetry and pretty much anything else that needs to get done” according to Romeo’s daughter and Culver’s mother, Melana Bontrager. She remembers dumpster diving in industrial areas with her dad when she was young, pulling out things that he would fix and sell “for a few bucks.”

2012 Seattle Recycled Art Gallery

Culver and his grandfather now make the rounds of scrap and junk yards in Everett and Lynnwood, looking for old car and farm equipment parts for Culver’s projects.  Culver is an avid lego fan and technical little guy. “He is very detailed in building things and great at sticking with the details. His attention span is longer than most kids his age,” says his mother, Melana Bontrager, who has shown her own artwork in galleries around the greater Puget Sound region. The young welder was excited about the possibility of selling Mr. Bones. He has other family members besides his mother who have shown in galleries before so he has had exposure to the world of selling art in galleries. Culver unfortunately could not be reached for comments, due to a busy schedule building lego creations with a couple buddies.

Melana mused, “Culver cracks himself up with mishaps like singeing his hair bangs. But he is not my emergency room child. He stands back, observing things carefully, then jumps in and thankfully comes out fairly unscathed.”

See more about the Recycled Arts Show on The RE Store’s page, including reviews, events and years worth of recycled art photo galleries. This year’s galleries included Seattle’s Blowing Sands Glass Studio, Allied Arts of Whatcom County, Whatcom Museum and The RE Store in Bellingham. The Blowing Sands exhibit is up until May 9th. If you subscribe to our email newsletter we keep you in the loop about upcoming workshops, recycled arts happenings, calls for art or designs, DIY videos and more.

Salvaged cabinet set from the The RE Store is just one many great re-purposed items at Mighty House

Mighty House Construction Co-Founders, Doug and Laura Elfline found themselves expecting twins in 2006, and quickly realized that their “postage stamp-sized” place in Georgetown was not going to fit the needs as the family was about to double in size.  So they bought a modest house in West Seattle that was originally built in 1980 – but in need of some extensive work before being prepared to bring the twins home.  They hadn’t planned on a kitchen model right away, but right as they were putting an offer on the house in West Seattle, a client of Doug’s had a visit to The RE Store noticing an amazing set of cabinets that our field crew was loading off the truck – she called Doug to say “Do you have a client in need of some cabinets?  You have to go to The RE Store and check these out”.  Before they had even closed on the house, much less measured or had any plans in place, they purchased this set of custom plywood cabinets.

The Kraft & Posie House

Our field crew remembers the job where they cabinets came from quite well – we pulled the whole cabinet set (original and the well matched custom plywood set) from the Kraft & Posie House, a historical registry home on E Prospect on Capitol Hill.

As Doug and Laura like to say, “It is a modest house, but a Mighty House” in that it is their home and gave birth to their sustainable building company, as well as being a showcase for smaller green shifts that have big impacts.  Mighty House Construction’s mission is to offer innovative, sustainable building solutions at an outstanding value.  Doug, a 3^rd generation contractor and Laura, a green building junkie, believe you don’t need radical changes to make a radical shift in your home – and their house is a great example of just that.

You can check out the house this weekend at the NW EcoBuilding Guild’s 2012 Green Home Tour.  The RE Store will be at the Expo event at Green Depot on Saturday (April 21^st) and at Mighty House (April 22^nd).  More info on the Expo and Tour can be found here:  seattlegreenhometour.org or find the tour guide in the back of this month’s Natural Awakenings – which you can pick up at The RE Store in Seattle.

Check out Mighty House Construction and their top 10 tips for sustainable living on their website:  mightyhouseconstruction.com

The Willows Inn on Lummi Island has leapt into the national gourmet food limelight in the last 18 months, under the culinary guidance of Olympia born, 25-year old acclaimed chef Blaine Wetzel. A 2011 article in the New York Times, titled, “10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride”, placed the Willows Inn amongst the great gastronomic experiences to be found in New York, London, Barcelona, Singapore, and Sydney. Read more about it’s philosophy and remodel project with reclaimed and local materials below the video.

West Shore Hospitality, a group of Whatcom County and Lummi Island-based investors, took notice of The Willows Inn’s publicity, buying out former owner, Riley Starks, in the fall of 2011. This local investment group opted for a full remodel of the entire facility, restaurant and the on-site accommodations. Nettles Farm lies behind the Inn, still owned by Starks, and is leased by the new owners as a part of the haven for gourmet locavores, growing greens, vegetables and flowers within a stone’s throw of the kitchen. With the restaurant’s focus on locally-sourced food and farm-to-table approach, they applied those same principles to the contractors and artists involved in the project. Many of the tradesman and contributors to the project were sourced from the Lummi Island community, known for its artisans and craftsfolk.

The RE Store’s own Eberhard Eichner lives on Lummi Island and contributed furniture and decor to the project along with others woodworkers Alan Rosen, Tom Lutz. Other locals involved in the project included: Pier Bosma doing fireplace stone work, Houston Foust’s stone and concrete work, ceramics by Ria Nickerson, Mark Bergsma’s photography and digital artwork, and resident artist Ria Harboe. Almost all of The Willows’ staff are Lummi Island residents as well.

As a part of the remodel, they hired Carol Beecher with Boston’s Saltwater Consulting, to be the “designer helping the Willow’s transform itself” for the remodel. Carol is a long-time fan of reclaimed materials, natural materials and old stuff. She wanted the interior of the a 102-year-old Inn to mirror its natural settings. She lobbied successfully for the restoration of the original fir flooring and brought out the original character hidden beneath the many layers of paint.

Carol saw Eberhard’s furniture in The RE Store and was compelled to get him involved. “The RE Store is my favorite place. That is where I always look for cool, funky things. I saw some furniture that Eberhard had done and I said, ‘I’ve got to reach out to this guy. He’s got what is in my mind and he can make it happen.”

The RE Store installed a set of sliding double doors between the main dining room and Blaine’s kitchen, a single sliding door unit made from cabinet doors that can partition off the private dining room, and a side table made from salvaged lumber and glass.

And so The Willows was renewed: the remodel was completed, the geoducks were dug, the local fish were caught, the farm out back produced prolifically, wildcrafted ingredients were harvested from the native forests, and the table was set.

For a truly local, gastronomically incredible experience, contact The Willows and leave behind your previously conceived notions of eating local.

Sorting the litter for recycling and for use in the art installation

What happens when you gather 940 pounds of litter from a beach and turn the best of that litter into a temporary art installation? 30 plus volunteers have fun, get creative and do something active to help the declining quality of our marine waters.

The RE Store’s 11th Annual Recycled Art Show opened with the second annual “Litter Becomes Art” beach clean-up and temporary art installation at Locust Beach in Bellingham. The North Sound Baykeeper partnered with The RE Store along with the Surfrider Foundation’s local chapter. Recycling Disposal Services in Ferndale sponsored the recycling and disposal of the material.

Locust Beach in Bellingham, Washington was the fortunate recipient of the group’s efforts. Locust is known as a “collector beach” with wind and wave patterns depositing large amounts of junk that floats in from Bellingham Bay. The mouth of the Nooksack River lies only a couple miles to the west of Locust Beach. The Nooksack River brings garbage out into the bay from the 82 square miles of watershed that the river drains from. The junk harms wildlife and marine water quality as plastics and other material leaches into the water.

Litter Becomes Art installation at Locust Beach

In 2011, Kuros Zahedi, led the art installation project at Locust Beach. He has led events like this throughout the Puget Sound region for years in partnership with The RE Store’s Show and on his own. This year, The RE Store and Baykeeper program developed the art installation concept, to mirror the profile of Lummi Island in the distance, with the words, Litter Art spelled out in the foreground.

People of all ages participated in collecting 940 pounds of beach trash

Weather was very accommodating as the skies opening up sunny and blue with a couple brief rain squalls passing through. As the trash was compiled and sorted, the group easily saw the impact that they were having. Dozens of bags, large chunks of styrofoam and fiberglass, tires, and masses of monofilament fishing net piled up high. In the end, the group left feeling like a real difference had been made and enjoyment was had by all. The Western Front even came down to report on the event.

Get more info or see photo galleries on The RE Store’s Recycled Art Show page. To receive the latest recycled art event updates along with other good news, do-it-yourself videos and workshops, subscribe to The RE Store’s Salvage Times.

The last remaining people of the 30+ volunteers after the art installation was complete: Lee First, Marisa Bradshaw, Nicole Baker, Jason Darling, Lynne Pendleton, and Lindsay Taylor

Ensemble of short tables made with these techniques

So you learned how to make a solid base for your table in the first video. In this second part of The RE Store’s REvision Division video series about making small tables from reclaimed materials, learn innovative ways to use salvaged materials for the rim of a small table. Watch Eberhard use corner blocks and pieces of moulding to create easy, forgiving details with the table tops. These techniques eliminate tricky mitre cuts and joints around the rim of a table.

REvision Division galleries at The RE Store in Seattle (Ballard) or Bellingham feature one-of-a-kind furniture and decor items built in Bellingham by The RE Store. Come view the latest highly affordable, stylish and creative reuse examples or steal our ideas to design your own pieces.

Eberhard shows angled screws in "butterfly technique" for making fast furniture joints

Furniture joinery might seem like it requires years of practice and great attention to detail. Eberhard Eichner, lead designer and builder in The RE Store’s REvision Division, begs to differ. The 30-year veteran of finish carpentry, furniture making and repair has figured out a way to quickly create strong joints when building furniture. Using his “butterfly technique” he quickly fastens items like salvaged cabinet doors, used hollow core doors, reclaimed trim and scrap lumber to create beautiful, strong and functional furniture and home decor items. Watch the video to see the ease of the butterfly technique.

Time 2:47

Visit the The RE Store’s REvision Division galleries inside our stores in Seattle or Bellingham to see the latest furniture creations. Each day is a new treasure hunt of the latest salvaged and reclaimed one-of-a-kind items. If you like what you saw, subscribe to this blog to receive the latest building tips from Eberhard.

Field Crew member, James Taylor (left), in action removing the cabinet set, which is then loaded on the truck (right).

Notes and photos by Ryan DeSales, Seattle Field Crew member

The RE Store relies on a dedicated team to keep things running smoothly. If you’re a regular at our Bellingham or Seattle stores, you might even know a few us by name. What you might not know, however, is that we have a whole cast of characters salvaging materials out in the field. In fact, the RE Store offers a range of field services, including: full salvage and strip-out, large item pickup, and green demolition (aka deconstruction). Without our hardworking field crews, we wouldn’t be able to recycle the volume and range of materials that we do.

To give you a better idea of what the RE Store’s field services are all about, you’re invited to tag along with yours truly and the rest of the Seattle field crew. Each month, I’ll fill you in on our harrowing exploits, daring do, and epic adventures in salvage. So get your tetanus shot and strap on your steel toed boots for this, the first installment:

The Seattle field crew salvages a lot of kitchens, and this week was no exception as we arrived at a condo in Magnolia to pull some cabinets. The homeowners were remodeling, which is a typical scenario for us. Not so typically, the marble tiled counter tops started falling off, tile by tile, as we tried to carry them to our truck. While it did make the cabinets lighter, we typically try to not break things.

After a few minutes of picking up marble tidbits from the parking lot, we were on our way with a nice set of cabinets. The homeowners saved money on their remodel and they kept reusable materials out of the waste stream. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is laying a new counter top on those cabinets right now; or at least they’re trying desperately to match the remaining tile. P.S., the RE Store has a great selection of tile. But seriously, salvage is a win-win situation for all involved, and we’re happy to do our part—even when a few pieces fall off.

Short tables demonstrated in the video

Watch the latest do-it-yourself video below from The RE Store’s REvision Division. Get a mini-seminar in “How to make small tables from recycled materials” This video is the first chapter in the table making series, focusing on creating the legs and structural support for the table, known as the underpinnings.

See how to give different looks to your furniture piece by using parts like stair spindles, clusters of banister staves, or even cabinet doors. Eberhard walks you through the prepping of leg materials, attaching stretchers to the legs, and affixing the underpinnings to the table top. His three different styles of short tables will give you great ideas for your own project.

Learn from Eberhard Eichner, our 30-year veteran of furniture building and finish carpentry who even did finish work on pipe organs earlier in his career. (Imagine a large pipe organ chord sound here). Visit the REvision Division furniture galleries within our stores in Seattle and Bellingham to ogle the beautiful and amazingly affordable pieces.

View one of Eberhard’s many other videos on:

How to build a bookshelf from reclaimed cabinet doors

Do it yourself cabinet decoration with scrap trim

Or visit our Youtube channel for many other videos about creative reuse, home decor, functional designs and more.

Bill Englander is an out-of-the-box tinkerer. His most recent project was building a Jacob’s Ladder for the newly rebranded Spark Museum in Bellingham. We will just let Bill tell you in his own words below the video…

As a boy, I had two grandfathers who each taught me the fine art of tinkering and repair.  Grandpa Englander whiled away his retirement gleaning old wooden wall phones from the early 20th century, removing the innards, and turning them into radios by installing newfangled transistor radios in the 1950s.  Grandpa Hastings could and would repair anything and everything.  Grandma had a cartoon framed on her kitchen wall that summed up Grandpa’s handiness: amid a background of ringer washers, Model-Ts, and old appliances, an Old Woman says to an Old Man holding an antique toaster, ” I KNOW you can fix it – you can fix anything.  I WANT A NEW ONE!”

Jacob's Ladder for the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention by Bill Englander

I probably saw my first Jacob’s Ladder as a kid watching the original Frankenstein movie on TV.  All my life I wanted to build one; it was just too cool for school.  In 2008 I purchased a used 15,000 volt neon transformer, which sat on a shelf until the summer of 2010 due to my innate fear of electrocuting myself in the process of pursuing my hobby.  Finally, I got up the nerve to begin designing my first ladder.  I scrounged an old rectangular radio case from the Museum of Radio and Electricity, purchased a motion sensor, touch switch, sockets, switches, lighting parts, and miscellaneous neat-looking stuff, all from The RE Store, and tinkered off and on for three months to the finished product.

The current ladder (pun intended) was created for the renamed Spark Museum of Electrical Invention with generous assistance from The RE Store, which supplied the futuristic-looking cap on the cylinder, the cap on the base, and all the brass bling on the base.  The borosilicate glass protective cylinder is a pipe salvaged from a secret bio-weapons laboratory in Downtown Bellingham located in the Spark Museum’s “basement.”  Sherwin-Williams donated the five-gallon you-know-what base;  CDI Signs supplied the transformer.  Radio Shack was nice enough to sell me the blinking LEDs and resistors.  Other parts were scrounged from my electrical box-o-goodies and “elsewhere.”  I put about 40 hours into this one.

Jacob's Ladder - base of unit

I volunteer at the Museum.  I noticed a year ago that the popular Jacob’s Ladder on exhibit was – in a word – fried.  The device creates ozone when it operates by burning air – O2.  This is of course great for the stratosphere, but bad for anything metallic, ’cause ozone is corrosive,  especially the metal in the Jacob’s Ladder enclosed in a Plexiglass box, such as it was.  The poor thing literally ate itself.  The new version includes a proprietary “Ozone Drain” (a plastic tube) that removes the ozone by gravity, as it is heavier than air.  The original design of my replacement ladder turned on by motion (The RE Store’s proximity sensor switch); the Museum expressed concern the ladder might continually cycle “ON” due to patrons flocking to it like bees to a flower, and subsequently go nuclear without warning.  So I ripped out the motion sensor and replaced it with a switch and a timer cannibalized from the dead ladder.

Giving up my baby (the newly completed Jacob’s Ladder) felt like losing a favorite shoe.  But I’m pulling out of it, and designing my next creation; I just hope it’s an 8 1/2 Left.

~ Bill Englander