50″ long x 14″wide x 18″tall; $1200 by special order at kirbyjones.com

I was browsing This Old  House and the above piece caught my eye since I’ve been getting more requests for work made from reclaimed lumber. M. Fine in Brooklyn is my local source for old, nice pieces. Most of their wood is old growth southern pine, but I found a piece of  spalted oak in their yard and used it as a table top on steel legs. Kirby Jones, is the the designer and fabricator of the above piece. His work can be seen at  www.kirbyjones.com.  His series made from reclaimed wood is spectacular.

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce has extended the exhibitor application for BKLYN DESIGNS 2010. Exhibitor applications, now due MONDAY DECEMBER 7th, are available online at bklyndesigns.com.All Brooklyn-based designers are encouraged to apply! BKLYN DESIGNS’ celebrity jury is a great way for designers’ work to fall into the hands of premier editors and design specialists. For more information please call Auster Agency at 718.243.1414.

Some people just get lucky finding valuable stuff in the trash. I just took on this restoration job for a client who found the above chair on the sidewalk in Park Slope. Other than the split in the seat, the chair is in perfect condition and is made from high quality solid wood. A seal on the inside leg says Johnson Chair Company. A few antique websites are selling Johnson Chairs for $300 and up. Below is a picture of the split. Clamps and glue will do the trick. After sanding off the old finish, Danish oil and lacquer will bring it back to life.

This chair’s lines are evocative of 1960’s design.
From its weight and joinery, you can tell it’s a good piece of furniture.

A postcard of the the Johnson Chair factory in Chicago.
In 1899, Johnson Chair Company made chairs for the US House and Senate.

]]> http://www.brooklynmodern.com/restoration-midcentury-chair-park-slope-trash/feed/ 1 http://www.brooklynmodern.com/ny-timescom-mans-trash/ http://www.brooklynmodern.com/ny-timescom-mans-trash/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:12:55 +0000 brooklynmodern http://www.brooklynmodern.com/?p=2457

Dan Phillips’s “tree house” made from recycled material. He built and rents it to low-income artists in Huntsville, Texas.

This interesting story appeared in the NY Times today about Dan Phillips, a Texan who makes homes out of salvaged homes for low income buyers.

Kate Murphy writes:
AMONG the traditional brick and clapboard structures that line the streets of this sleepy East Texas town, 70 miles north of Houston, a few houses stand out: their roofs are made of license plates, and their windows of crystal platters.

They are the creations of Dan Phillips, 64, who has had an astonishingly varied life, working as an intelligence officer in the Army, a college dance instructor, an antiques dealer and a syndicated cryptogram puzzle maker. About 12 years ago, Mr. Phillips began his latest career: building low-income housing out of trash.

In 1997 Mr. Phillips mortgaged his house to start his construction company, Phoenix Commotion. “Look at kids playing with blocks,” he said. “I think it’s in everyone’s DNA to want to be a builder.” Moreover, he said, he was disturbed by the irony of landfills choked with building materials and yet a lack of affordable housing.

To him, almost anything discarded and durable is potential building material. Standing in one of his houses and pointing to a colorful, zigzag-patterned ceiling he made out of thousands of picture frame corners, Mr. Phillips said, “A frame shop was getting rid of old samples, and I was there waiting.”

So far, he has built 14 homes in Huntsville, which is his hometown, on lots either purchased or received as a donation. A self-taught carpenter, electrician and plumber, Mr. Phillips said 80 percent of the materials are salvaged from other construction projects, hauled out of trash heaps or just picked up from the side of the road. “You can’t defy the laws of physics or building codes,” he said, “but beyond that, the possibilities are endless.”

While the homes are intended for low-income individuals, some of the original buyers could not hold on to them. To Mr. Phillips’s disappointment, half of the homes he has built have been lost to foreclosure — the payments ranged from $99 to $300 a month.

Some of those people simply disappeared, leaving the properties distressingly dirty and in disrepair. “You can put someone in a new home but you can’t give them a new mindset,” Mr. Phillips said.

Although the homes have resold quickly to more-affluent buyers, Mr. Phillips remains fervently committed to his vision of building for low-income people. “I think mobile homes are a blight on the planet,” he said. “Attractive, affordable housing is possible and I’m out to prove it.”

Freed by necessity from what he calls the “tyranny of the two-by-four and four-by-eight,” common sizes for studs and sheets of plywood, respectively, Mr. Phillips makes use of end cuts discarded by other builders — he nails them together into sturdy and visually interesting grids. He also makes use of mismatched bricks, shards of ceramic tiles, shattered mirrors, bottle butts, wine corks, old DVDs and even bones from nearby cattle yards.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a complete set of anything because repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern, repetition creates pattern,” said Mr. Phillips, who is slight and sinewy with a long gray ponytail and bushy mustache. He grips the armrests of his chair when he talks as if his latent energy might otherwise catapult him out of his seat.

Phoenix Commotion homes meet local building codes and Mr. Phillips frequently consults with professional engineers, electricians and plumbers to make sure his designs, layouts and workmanship are sound. Marsha Phillips, his wife of 40 years and a former high school art teacher, vets his plans for aesthetics.

“He doesn’t have to redo things often,” said Robert McCaffety, a local master electrician who occasionally inspects Mr. Phillips’s wiring. “He does everything in a very neat and well thought-out manner.” Describing Huntsville as a “fairly conservative town,” Mr. McCaffety said, “There are people who think his houses are pretty whacked out but, by and large, people support what he does and think it’s beneficial to the community.”

Click here for the rest of the article. and check out the multimedia presentation here.

Visit Dan Phillips’ Phoenix Commotion, where you can donate to his cause, and here’s a video on his business:

]]> http://www.brooklynmodern.com/ny-timescom-mans-trash/feed/ 2 http://www.brooklynmodern.com/reclaimed-home-build-eco-brooklyn/ http://www.brooklynmodern.com/reclaimed-home-build-eco-brooklyn/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:12:44 +0000 brooklynmodern http://www.brooklynmodern.com/?p=2419 Two of my favorite Brooklyn bloggers, Reclaimed Home and Eco Brooklyn collaborated on this video about green building a brownstone. I’m eagerly waiting for part 2.

Reclaimed Home writes:
Last week I visited the Eco Brooklyn house in Carroll Gardens and spoke with Gennaro Brooks-Church about his project. Well, ok, if it doesn’t look like Gennaro is talking to the camera, that’s because I piggybacked on a contractor’s job interview. Anyhoo, please excuse my lack of editing skills….still haven’t learned a thing.

All of the material used in this restoration was recycled! Crazy used stuff I’ve never been able to get my hands on, like sheetrock and plywood. This guy’s got connections, baby!

Part II will be a tour of the house, a work in progress. I’ve really gotta figure out how to edit that bit though.

Gennaro Brooks-Church of Eco Brooklyn installing a solar tube in a Brooklyn brownstone.
Check out the amount of light coming through even on an overcast day.

If you’re interested in green building in Brooklyn, I would suggest subscribing to  Eco Brooklyn Inc’s posts. Gennaro Brooks-Church, is the author and he is a Brooklyn based contractor, Certified EcoBroker®, LEED AP, educator, lifetime builder and author of the Build It Forward green building concept. Hence, the information comes from a reliable source. Since I’ve been following the site, I’ve learned about the importance of insulation and how it’s easy to install, working with salvaged wood, good business models for green building, and raising chickens.

Gennaro also goes beyond his site to promote green building in Brooklyn.  In a radio interview on Burning Down the House (click to hear, section:  Popular Recycled Materials in NYC), he discusses the value of reclaimed lumber and talks about my favorite source for salvaged wood in Brooklyn,  M. Fine Lumber. (click here to read old post on M. Fine)

In addition, Eco Brooklyn is looking for a  a space to keep their salvaged materials. If anyone knows of a place to rent, sale or donation in the Carroll Gardens or Red Hook area, get in touch with Eco Brooklyn.

If you’re interested in helping Bklyn’s environment and using your roof for something tasty like veggies, check out the green roofing workshop by Green It Yourself and Eco Brooklyn. They offer intensive and semi-intensive classes from $300 to $600.  For basic info, look into their free class on August 8th. Additionally, if you’re interested in green roofing as a profession, check out greenroof.org to learn about the industry and becoming accredited.

Instructables is a great site for D.I.Y. types. One of their recent posts teaches you how to make a bench from cardboard, which has actually become a material of choice for many designers lately. The builder of this bench mentioned that he was inspired by the work of Brooklyn’s very own Scrapile.  Aside from being an easy project, this tutorial also has a sustainable benefit if it’s done with reclaimed cardboard.  The author also testifies to the bench’s strength, saying that it can support three adults. But just keep it keep away from water. Visit the tutorial here and download a pdf with instructions.

SCRAPILE ’s benches made with repurposed scraps of wood from New York’s woodworking industry. Visit their site here.