What to do With Salvage Materials
Seeking wisdom on what (and perhaps how) to try to salvage from a central Virginia farmhouse originally built shortly after the Civil War (with a 1950s or so addition). I like the idea of deconstruction, but I’m not sure how much we can realistically reuse. We will be building a new house elsewhere on the site.
Current ideas are:
– hardwood floors can be reused as floors
– some of limestone foundation can be used in gardens
– bricks from the chimney?
– framing timber is probably neat, but it seems like a lot of effort to save it and what, then, could it actually be used for?
– (Note I don’t believe there is anything of any particular architectural significance, but we may have a contact who could help with that)
I have not yet checked with the local Habitat for Humanity to see if they do deconstructions, but even if they do I’m not sure it would be worth it to them, especially if I’m already taking the hardwood floors.
Anyone have any tips?
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Replies
Paul,
Maybe these folks can guide you? http://www.salvagewrights.com/
Thanks, I may get in touch with them
My neighbor re-used the bricks from the house as pavers for the garden. Old mortar is easy to clean up and it adds a nice touch to the backyard.
About the only thing I managed to ever make out of salvaged wood is a rustic tabletop and some shelving, the rest are still sitting in my shed.
Yeah, I'm thinking that any wood I salvaged would probably just take up space for a long time.
In terms of dollars and cents salving material is almost a certain loser if you are paying for labor. Most everything is covered in lead paint requiring lots of labor and nasty chemicals to remove. Unless the flooring is very special the labor required to remove it install and finish the floor will exceed the cost of new flooring.
Deconstruction is only viable where it is a government requirement and landfill fees are insane.
Note the chimney brick is very different than paving brick. The chimney brick is softer and will be destroyed by freeze thaw cycles if it contact with moist earth.
The framing lumber is most likely ruff sawn without grading stamps so it would not be code compliant today.
The lime stone will be great in the yard.
Walta
Thanks for the tips. It's an old family house so we just want to use some things from it in the new house we're going to build. The labor for anything we reuse will be mine. It would also be nice to avoid landfilling so much if someone else wanted things out of it (and would not charge us to take it).
I just finished deconstructing a house where environmental concerns meant it had to be demolished by hand.
First, be careful. At every step, think about what can fall on you, and what you could fall off of. There's a lot of potential energy in a house, and it may not be as well put-together as you think. Take small bites, don't try to take the whole house down at once.
My experience was there's not much that ends up being salvageable. I worked with a local non-profit that got the good stuff -- appliances, fixtures, cabinets. But over the past year they've gotten fussier about what they take, I think that a lot of people are doing pandemic projects and they're getting swamped with donations. Once they had taken what they would, I worked on giving away things I thought were reusable, I hate throwing away stuff.
Walter is correct that unstamped lumber can't be used in inspected construction. However, I found I was able to give away quite a lot of it. Anything that was less than six feet, or notched or cracked, I would throw in the dumpster right away. For the rest, I put the word out, and I got a few people who were building a garage or a shed or whatever and would come by regularly and take stuff. I wouldn't think it's worthwhile to pull nails out of a 2x4 to reuse it but I would put out piles of naily 2x4's and they would disappear. Larger pieces, like joists and rafters, would go quickly.
I found that sheathing -- either plywood or plank -- generally didn't move. OSB I didn't even bother trying to save. Cedar siding was popular, cedar shingles not.
For hardwood floors, it's really, really hard to get them up in a usable form. If the tongue or groove gets broken they're trash. If they were put down with staples, forget it, you'll never get them up in one piece. If they were put down with nails you might, if you're very careful. Depending on the type of nail it might be easier to cut them with a reciprocating saw. But I agree with the assessment that unless the wood is something special it's just not worth it. Oak flooring is less than $3/square foot at my local Home Depot.
I truly think that you need to talk to some specialists in this domain, as they will surely give you proper advice on what you can reuse and what you should just throw away. I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago, as I was looking to salvage the old house on our farm, and I wanted to reuse some of the materials. However, since the contractors came in, they told me that I just had to throw everything away. That's when I decided to get a tractor from Machinery Dealer https://www.machinerydealer.co.uk/compact-tractors-for-sale/ and just set it into the damn house!
Welcome to Spamalot!
One additional possibility is old timbers. Shortly post Civil War, most residential framing was still post and beam, with substantial timbers making up the frame of the house. Those old timbers are generally valuable for use as exposed cosmetic timbers for newer construction. Depending on your design aesthetic, you may even find use for them in your new house.
Thread is a year and a half old, but all I could think of was Chestnut timbers!