Month: September 2013

Ask any of my immediate family members and they will tell you that I was born for this new career path of salvage and junk collecting. They tell me that when I was growing up I would clean out the garage on a regular basis, taking everything out and putting it all back again. My two sisters with whom I shared a bedroom will also tell you that I was constantly re-arranging our room to their dismay. How could I have caused any grief for them when I was this cute???

As I have been feeling very grateful lately about how my second career has been coming along, it occurred to me that my life has reverted back to collecting, packing the truck, unpacking the truck, organizing one of our many warehouses and driving my family crazy again.

After having a career in the environmental field for 16+ years, building demolition and salvage comes naturally and is a great way to spend my days. If you had a magic wand and could pursue any dream in your mind what would it be? #gojunk!

Many times when we are talking to the wonderful people that come into our shop we’re asked….”where do you find your junk?” or “can we come with you on a pick?”. I even had a lovely lady ask me if we could do a field trip for her and some of her friends to one of our sites to pick junk! While I would love to bring you all along with us, the sites are a mess and generally not safe, but I will try and give you a little insight as to how we find our picks and what they look like when we get there. Our sister company, Maximus Consulting, does building demolition of mainly residential structures and also demolition management of much larger sites such as schools and commercial buildings. These are some of the sites where we have worked…..

The house on the left is located in Harrison County Ohio and our crew demolished that a month or so ago. The school on the right is in Austintown Ohio and was demolished in June 2013 while we watched. We were able to save some real treasures from both the house and the school including doors, windows, sandstone and furniture. Anything we didn’t rescue went to the dump. This is photo shows the conditions on the inside of the house, the only thing you cant experience from this photo is the godawful odor in the house. This house sat vacant for about six years before we knocked it down just this week.

The crew was able to rescue that door in the photo and the armoire out of this room. From the rest of the house we scored two side tables, wood crates, rusty wheelbarrow and best of all a large ceramic collie dog bank. All of these goodies get a good cleaning and sometimes a re-purpose into a new use or just sold as is with a new coat of paint.

What will today bring? Heading to downtown Cleveland to check out a project at the East Ohio Gas building. This complete renovation will surely have some goodies to salvage but will they let me? Stay tuned…..Go Junk!