Thrifting Around Town: ReHouse Architectural Salvage

On my career exploration in the trash to treasure business, I made a stop into ReHouse on West Ridge Road. They have good reviews by customers on Yelp.com and are active on FaceBook. The store is HUGE but still easy to navigate and browse. I’ve never seen anything like this place! Items are labeled and organized into categories and the staff is friendly. The fastest moving items are doors. They sold over 540 doors last year and have thousands more in inventory: solid doors, hollow core, closet doors, indoor, outdoor, French doors, four panel, six panel. Pretty much any kind of door that you might possibly need. (Except for the kind you can buy from Lowe’s!)

The other highly sought after categories are kitchen cabinets, furniture, plumbing, lighting, windows and décor.

Over the summer of 2013, ReHouse won the bid to salvage materials out of the Geneva Public High School. After countless labor hours and twenty truck loads full of materials, there are lots of unique items now in the ReHouse inventory. I saw water fountains, school desks, amazing light fixtures, bookshelves, banisters, auditorium seating, chalkboards and metal lockers sprinkled throughout the store. I don’t know of any other place around town where you can find legit metal lockers. They would be great for a mudroom or garage storage!

Windows are salvaged from old houses and business locations before the demolition/ construction teams tear a structure down. There are hundreds of them neatly lined up by size. I have a Pinterest board dedicated to reusing old windows, so check it out for some inspiration!

WP_20131109_12_15_06_Pro The Salvage Gallery, stainless flatware creations by Andy and Rose Famellette in Macedon, NY, sell their awesome garden art at markets around town in the summer, but also have a nice display inside of ReHouse. Perfect match, right? Something like ReHouse and ReSpoon.

I have a garden "turtle" that I purchased from them a while back; the turtle shell is a pot lid, the head is a serving spoon and the legs and tail are silverware welded onto the pot lid. Can you picture it? It’s really cute. In fact, I’ve looked into taking welding classes because I love this form of reusing estate sale and thrift store silverware. Maybe someday….

Hello shutter wall! So many ideas, so many shutters…..

Look at this beautiful display of old doorknobs! My intention was just to scope the store out, to get a better understanding of the places and people in town who are into the reuse, repurpose field, but….after meeting the owner and talking for a few minutes I found myself saying (OUT LOUD) that I was looking for a career change. It just slipped out! Well, it turns out that she is looking for someone to spend some time on the ReHouse Pinterest page….would I be interested in working from home doing that a few hours a week? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ABSOLUTELY, yes!