Waiting for the other house to drop
This spring, my office had two client-households close on homes that they planned to tear down and replace. Both went modular. I wrote about the first one, when it landed in July. The second one just landed.
This house is twice as big as the one that landed at the end of July.
Because of its size, I learned something new about modular design: thirteen feet is the magic number for room width. A room can be as long as you want it, but width beyond thirteen feet takes a little extra work. My client’s master bedroom is more than thirteen feet wide. Part of it was in one box and part of it is in the other. Their family room was too wide, too, so it had to have a police escort from New Hampshire for highway safety.
The land these clients wanted had a house on it. The house was much loved by an extended family. It was outdated, but still very serviceable as a nice family home. It had a new bathroom, lots of nice woodwork and wood floors, some good light fixtures, sinks, and appliances. This created an ethical dilemma for my clients: How to mitigate the waste of good house materials.
To minimize the waste, they had the house de-constructed by ReStore workers. ReStore is a branch of Habitat for Humanity. It takes the reusable items out of a house before demolition. The building materials are then donated to a store for resale and reuse. The bathroom and kitchen fixtures, some lighting fixtures, appliances, the wood floors, and wood trim were all removed instead of getting demolished. Habitat gets the money. Some builder gets to use old hardwood flooring again. Win-win.
Household building materials are a major source of waste. I was pleased to hear about ReStore. I am pleased to pass on information about this good idea.
Has anyone tried it? Who else is doing a good job of reusing household materials?
