Etiquette question with trying to salvage pre dumpster.

[Gothichome]

Ahhhhhh, the seamy side of old home folks, groups of slightly greying folks, lurking in the shadows in there paint drip stained, camouflaged dark clothes. Each prowling the deep under belly of the redevelopment zones. All heavily armed with screw drivers and crow bars waiting to strike. As dusk settles in,you can hear them murmuring in the shadows as they wait for the workers to leave. AND THEN THEY STRIKE, like ravenous animals, they hit the bottom of the bins, on the hunt for the allusive brass door nob, a section of antique trim, and the elusive pain of wavy glass. They scurry off with thier treasure, assuring a descent bed time. All is quiet for the rest of the evening. The home owners, assured the divers have left, they open up there new vinyl windows to vent there freshly dry walled open concept home. Blissfully unaware of their folly.

[Lily left the valley]

Gothic: Spot on.

This just reminded me of when we were at a friends' house when they were getting ready to sell their home. They had a dumpster, and I not so casually hopped up on the side pipe used to hoist it up, and leaned over. I then started reaching for something as said friend says, "What are you doing? Everything in there is junk."

Red faced, I pointed and said, "but the back of this chair has this really nice caning."

"It's ripped out, and the chair is busted anyway," he replies.

"But it's still a large piece in great shape and I could fit it onto something else, like a drawer front or a box top!"

Said friend sighs, shakes his head, and walks away.

[Gothichome]

Ya, I do take the time to peek into the dumpster, when some is gutting an oold home. I have never found any thing though worth the effort.

[phil]

rather thqn dumpster diving I just watch craigslist - free section and I just look near me to prevent long trips usually.
usually it's old couches and remnanats of junk they are too lazy to take to the dump but I have found quite a few good things. I also check the materials section if I am looking for materials. use the search option.

I got too much to list. last year a guy gave me so many things. a snare drum, roller skates, a couple of really cool antique chairs. an antique radio. i gave away a nice guitar, a stereo, I gave a drummer a snare drum..some furniture to those who wanted it. a record player from the CBC radio station. this year I got all the craftsman trim that I could haul and a whole bunch of steel bars. must be two tons of them. moulding, picture rails. I can use. In needed extra baseboards as some of mine were damaged or missing. I got some big 14 inch ones that will make new pantry shelves. some buckets of epoxy and floor coating materials from a concrete finishing supplier that was moving.. I got a nice set of mercedees wheels with good tires which I passed on to my brother who had a car to fit them. sheets of drywall, MDF. I got brass , lengths of nice thick brass sheet stock and heavy angle stock. I'm thinking of making some cratsman style lamps with the beautiful brass stock. Its fun to work with. I want to find some mica sheet stock for the lamps. Ive been looking at others and some are made of wood, brass and mica panels and look beautiful with pretty simple designs that could be copied or imitated. Ive got a box of lamp parts so sockets and things I won't buy new. or cords. Ive even got boxes of old light bulbs from garage sales and stuff.

Ive been using the epoxy resin for all kinds of projects. i got a real variety of pipe and steel bar stock and plan to use some of that for gates and fences. my brother fixed the transom on his boat with my free epoxy. I got some free plastic drums, enough to build some docks for our summer place. Il probably find the timber for the decking too.
even the drums had car wash , etch, different kinds of soaps for washing cars. enviro solvents for washing car parts and stuff. i put it into labelled containers and I try to use it all up. I just siphoned off the remnants from the barrels and cleaned them up so I can take them to the lake.
I got enough firewood for winter. I just had to haul it home and chop it. I got most of the materials I am now using in my reno, the insulation, soundproof drywall, lots of the other drywall.
yesterday I went to lowes. I needed three more sheets of sound proof drywall. it was 72 bucks a sheet. anyway they had 4 sheets of 1/4 inch and some cracks and chipped corners and I got that instead for half price so Ill double it up with green glue in between the sheets since the last of the soundproof insulation was too expensive and it isn't the noisiest part of the house anyway so I saved lots by doing that. all the other soundproof drywall I got at a discount but some was still expensive, but i saved where I could. i already had some 1/4 " left so by doubling that up it saves me a couple hundred and that's all I needed to finish.

I saw an add recently a guy had drywall remnants and a full box of taping mud left over that he wanted to give away so I wrote him and saiud Ill take his drywall scraps along with mine to recycling if I can have the mud he has left over. i think i was too late, no reply , sometimes things don't work out so I just keep doing it anyway... it's ok.

Some of the insulation was 4 inch instead of 3.5" so I sliced it thinner, but it worked fine. the 4 inch stuff was free. its a hundred bucks a sheet new. I got all the drywall from about 5 different sources and paid about half price. Ive been back to lowes three times and each time I buy the chipped edge sheets for half price. by the time I use it up I go back and see what's in the damaged pile and Ive had good luck. no one wants to buy the damaged sheets and find I can usually just cut out the broken parts. most need to be cut anyway so I just cut the damaged parts out. the manager is just happy to get rid of the broken ones and they are still 90% useable. a little mishap with the forklift happens now and then and when it does , no one will pay full price and they hate having to send it back or deal with it.

whenever you buy new materials , its always worth it to just ask if you notice damaged packages. Often even just a crushed box can have perfectly intact contents and most store managers are only happy to see it off the shelves. Concumers won't but the damaged box usually so they are stuck with it. Usually the big box places don't pay for stuff until they sell it and return it to the supplier but the handling is a hassle for them so they will at least give a little discount. Usually the paint colors are terrible but sometimes you can find paint that's been mixed and it can still be tinted and used.

I heard a funny story about a guy that would go get them to mix paint and carry it around , leaving it somewhere and check back later in the mistints section to see if it was marked down .. lol . I didn't do that for the record, iust found it funny. I did find a few gallons of turpentine in dented cans for 1/2 price, sweet, I can use that.. -)

I just keep looking for materials I can use. sometimes I sit on them a while and if I am stuck I try to re-gift them through Craigslist free. Often I base my projects on what I have around that I want to use up. I'm into woodworking and there seems to be endless sources of wood to re-use or nice wood people have bought and sat on and never used.

in all of this I feel good. It's saving me about half the cost of materials. I dont' hesitate too much when I need stuff and buy new, but I look for used first no matter what it is. I'm preventing a lot of stuff from going to the dump. If I pick up metal and don't' use it I can take it to recycling. sometimes I have my moments. a few weeks ago I carted home some tanning bed lights and they are ridiculously heavy and I don't' know why I needed those so I might have some cost of disposal but I'll separate the metal and dispose of the ballasts or whatever is in them responsibly. . They work but take a lot of power to run and they are so heavy, probably not the best deal but maybe I can use some bits from those even. I got 4 nice craftsman style french doors all with original shellac finish , some broken panes but I even got the hardware.

I find it all a challenge. with a little luck and some creativity I find I use most of what I pick up and when I go to do projects I am often guided by what I want to use up. I try not to pick up stuff I can't store or use. I have a huge stock of materials to work with so in many cases I already have enough on hand and it saves going out to buy stuff. some of it like brass stock and stainless steel and the epoxy, aluminum checker plate.. is expensive to buy and I'll often find myself using stuff and go wow Im glad Im not buying that new. It also gives me so many different materials that I have choices and in many cases the used stuff exceeds the quality of what I'd have used if I had to buy it new.

for a while I got on this idea of replacing my wood patio with brick so I went and got about 6 different loads of antique brick , from old chimneys.etc. I arranged it all in a semi random mix and laid a 20 x 20 patio that needs very little maintenance. I like it beacuse it's old brick so it suits the surroundings. all i had to pay for was a load of gravel to ut nder it and the special sand to put between the bricks but I even found a bucket of that special sand withthe cement finishing stuff so I can use that to fill any more areas i wan to. the special sand is expensive. about 50 bucks a sack.

i have to do my underground storm gutters soon but I already scrounged most of the plastic pipe and elbows and parts for free. Ill need the glue and some more lengths of pipe but it's pretty cheap if I dont' find it used by the time I get to that.

I think if I didn't work full time I could probably keep busy just picking up free or discounted materials and using them on the house or in creative projects. It's incredible what you can do just by being resourceful. Ive met some really nice people in picking stuff up and in with giving some of it away too. sometimes It leads me to others who are renovating and Ive learned lots with through those connections. a lot of the people giving the stuff up or selling remnants are like minded.

what I do is just set my homepage to Craigslist free. If I know i am going out or before I leave somewhere I often give it a quick check. I also search materials for any product Im looking for and often I find it before I need it if I just plan ahead a little. Usually it's couches and IKEA junk but if you watch it and are ready to go pick stuff up it definitely pays off. it takes the same number of trips to buy stuff new so this way I can often combine the trip into a commute or something and that saves gas too. I probably make a few extra dump or recycling runs and high-grade some of it but the work in picking up used stuff and dealing with it by far pays off for me.

I think the odd time I meet someone who is a bit of a collector of materials like me ( or a scrounge lol ) and if they happen to be moving then sometimes they are just happy to see it go to someone who thanks them and will try to use it rather than just cart it to the dump. meanwhile, being a tinkerer it's all like a giant mechanno set with endless possibilities and I don't feel shamed in any way, it's kind of a "sport" if you let it be.

we recently had the news here target Wallmart. they showed on TV all the food they throw in the dumpster. Obviously that hit people with the realization that a lot of this foor is fine for consumption and should go to the homeless shelters if they can use it. I think it made a big impact and gave people a reason not to shop at wallmart and wallmart pledged to do somethign about it but only because of the publicity.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/ma ... -1.3814719

Phil

[lovesickest]

I have only been yelled once while in a dumpster. There were a ton of pressure treated decking boards - which were exactly what I needed. The owner (or tenant) yelled at me out the window, claiming their contractor was going to re-use them. If so - why were they carelessly tossed in a dumpster v.s. stacked with care ? I left them. This person owned a local business - one that I was no longer a patron of !

I've had some good luck with keeping an eye on local renos, though what gets tossed out makes me sad/mad. Have I snuck out at 1:00 a.m. in freezing drizzle to remove items/materials from a dumpster ? Yes I have.

As long as you are neat, polite and respectful then the homeowner will usually tolerate your investigations. Sometimes they are jerks (see above).

It's always worth inquiring about a thing you've seen in a house that is about to be reno'd. Often people are happy to have someone do the removal work for them. Sometimes they are jerks and decide the thing you've expressed interest in is valuable. It's good to wait around, and when no one pays 4 figures for say, 1950's arborite countertops, sometimes they become magically free. The hard part is walking away from an excellent thing that a delusional homeowner is being mercenary about.

I strongly believe that to better your luck you need to give as well as receive. I've had good free thing luck - and also put out anything that was useful that I no longer wanted or posted it for free on CL.

[Lily left the valley]

Gothic, maybe you have too much local competition.

Phil, if the tanning lights you mentioned are anything like the one we have in our living room right now, we just changed out the bulbs and use it for either a work light or photo/video light. It has the switches for each side independent, plus there's overall fade, the central stem raises and lowers, and the arms are goosenecks to boot. Best multipurpose freebie we picked up in a long time. We've had it since 2001, I think. It's one of the few large pieces that never got given away or left curbside during a state to state move.

If you ever make those lamps, I'd love to see them.

Phil & lovesickest, I agree that it helps when things keep circulating til they find their forever home.

I've belonged to Freecycle listings where we live, though I haven't changed that over still--this move has been one of the bigger blurs of time post move out of all ours. Craig's List is hit and miss, but worth checking.

We also have some decent foot traffic here, so we (and our neighbors downstairs too) will occasionally put out a box of whatever with "free" on the side. When we hit one town that had a town wide yard sale, all the hubbies wanted to give away whatever they could rather than take it back home at the end of the day. I wound up with some neat oddball pieces, and one place earned a whole slew of baskets, more than I'd ever need. I took what the few I needed and free boxed the rest. He was just so happy when we took all those baskets off his hands.

One of the fellas spouse works with got an unbelievable amount of building supplies off of curbs and renos, dumpsters. Almost his entire structural home that he built is made from them. There was also a building boom in his town around then, but still--that was quite a feat.

This is all great stuff folks have been posting since my inquiry. I love how much is repurposed with folks like ours.