A new home for old construction materials

Renovators find construction discards are in demand

CHRIS PEDOTA / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Steve Feldman, president of Green Demolitions, has a Riverdale showroom filled with kitchens and baths salvaged from high-end homes and ready for resale.

March 13, 2011 - Renovating? You could just rip up the old room and sweep everything into the trash bin.

But a growing number of homeowners, architects and builders are trying to reuse or recycle construction materials whenever possible — for reasons both environmental and aesthetic.

Architect Anthony Garrett of the Bilow Garrett Group in Ridgefield Park went this route with the gut renovation of a Hoboken building. Its wooden floor joists, more than a century old, were reclaimed and trucked to Montville Township, to be reused as flooring and exposed beams in a planned mixed-use development.

"It’s dismantling, as opposed to demolition," Garrett said. "I can’t think of anything more sustainable than that; there’s an embedded energy in that material that we salvage, and we don’t have to cut any more trees down." {continued}