What Once Was Lost

There is evidence our house once had a bookcase/column system separating the living room from the dining room.  The hardwood floor has been patched where the bookcases once were and you can see small indents in the header where the columns were once attached.

The house that got demolished had managed to retain this system over the years on one half of the duplex.  One side has a pull down desk built-in, but the pull down part of the desk is missing.

The back of the system is covered in wainscoting that matches our dining room.  Hurray!  More wood to strip!

Rob bought a battery operated saw to cut the built-in out of the duplex and moved it to our driveway.  (Yes, we are starting to look a bit like Sanford & Son.)

We hope to have this repaired and installed in the house.  It's a tad wide for the space we have, but we'll get creative on that.

 

More Doors from "The Haul"

The demolished duplex had classic Craftsman five panel doors.  Many of them had the original hardware.  And some had an extra door knob of the contemporary kind -- is it really so hard to replace a door knob that you would just add a second one?

All in all, we now have ten of these doors in our basement.  They range in size from 24 inches to 36 inches.  We plan to reframe the doorways of some of the doors in the basement, so we can use all of these.

In what is becoming a familiar statement, Rob started to strip one, so we know it's douglas fir.  And the hardware is gorgeous.

Ultimately, we'll be taking all of these to Azusa to get stripped, just like the cabinet doors.

Best of all, when Rob was pulling these from the house, the guy we think took our shower set came by and asked if he could have them.  Rob had already claimed all of them.  Even though it's petty, that felt really good!

Doors from "The Haul"

These leaded glass doors are from a cabinet in the dining room of the house that was torn down.  It's the same cabinet all these drawers are from.

The house was actually a duplex, so we're lucky enough to have eight of these doors, mostly in good condition.

Rob started stripping them; the hardware is almost the same as the drawers, but the pull is more of a teacup shape.

Yesterday we took the doors to a wood stripper in Azusa.  We're hoping to use these for our kitchen cabinets.

Taking It All Off

These drawers are from a cabinet in the dining room.

The drawers themselves were not that interesting, but the pulls caught Rob's eyes.  He saw four little square indentations that indicated these were not some cheap thing from a contemporary hardware store.

Under all that white paint, beautiful brass!  Woo-hoo!

Demolition!

Neighborhood eyesore.

Halfway down.

This eyesore was at the end of our block.

It's been vacant for months.  We'd heard it was going to be torn down and have been trying for a few weeks to get in touch with the owner to see if we could get inside to do some salvage.  No luck.

On Saturday, Rob saw a demolition crew when he was walking the dogs.  He talked to them and they agreed to let him inside.  Of course, I was traveling for work and couldn't help.  Just my luck...wink!

Over the next few days, I'll be posting pictures of what he found.  It's quite the score. 

All gone...except for what Rob salvaged.