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Saturday, November 5, 2011

More "Junk-Diving" for Tiny House Building Materials....

Junk grabbin', dumpster diving, curbside culling, call it what you will, but the price is right!

Every third weekend or so, its off to the town transfer station (a fancier term for "Dump" these day, much like "nuclear waste" has been replaced with the term "spent fuel rods" to paint a different picture of the same exact thing. They call this "putting lipstick on a pig".). Here, they don't have much to sort through, mainly because the old timers who pretty much LIVE there (and occasionally "work" there) grab up everything before its lifted off anyone's truck. I really don't blame them. These guys sit around next to an old beat down dog napping in the dirt, and have the time of their lives yelling at people who "incorrectly stomp the cardboard down" before tossing it in the dumpster.
    Anyway, every once in awhile there's something they missed, or something deemed truly worthless to them and passed up on, and that's where I swoop in, with a recycled cape (formerly a table cloth) and all! Super Salvager!

Coming soon, more photos (updates on their work) of Dustin and Dawn Diedricksen's house.
 Today I grabbed....

-ANOTHER front loading washing machine circular window- which will be made into a circular porthole-style window in one of my future cabins- perhaps something to be donated to the Occupy Boston folks- we'll see.

-A sheet of tempered glass with some funky 70s, concentric designs in it- it was formerly a refridgerator shelf- I'll make it into a window- perhaps even for the greenhouse I'm currently building for someone.

-A freebie wooden door- I'm always in need of these, and each one grabbed out of the trash (in this case) is about 45 lbs of debris rescued from a landfill. Its also about $80-$100 rescued from my wallet! In some cases its actually more of a savings than that.

-And the tea kettle shown above- I don't plan to use it for tea, I just got sick of looking at the humidifying bread pan on top of my woodstove. I kinda liked the 70s "sunburst" color on it too.

Anyway, Monday, its off to a speaking engagement at M.I.T. of all places, which should be fun- their campus is gorgeous too, so I'm looking forward to it, and to checking out some of my old haunts in Boston afterward. There, I'll definitely be yacking about the recycled and repurposed aspects of tiny home/house/shelter building.

-Derek "Deek" Diedricksen

$11.53- the NEW edition of my book- order in the left hand column of this blog