Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Not only that, but I have a number of friends in architectural salvage. People pay big bucks for parts of old houses .... doors, floor boards, windows, ... even old barn wood goes for a premium these days. Granted, it's more the case with turn of the century stuff (rather than a lot of the crapola that was built in the 50s and 60s), but ... if an old door can be recycled as a "vintage" door, and some idiot in my town is willing to pay $3000 dollars for it ... well then ... why not??
The value of much of the material could be several times the value of the house ... even if it was taken apart bit by bit. And, as to some of it ... how hard can it be to take down a door?? Even if it's not the greatest looking door .... I have friends who will repurpose it as a headboard or a coffee table and charge a freaking mint for it. (A little joint compound here ... some paint and stain there ... and bingo ... fine art!!)
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Yep. You can certainly recycle a lot of parts of older houses that were decent in the first place.
The question is whether you can economically recycle them into new housing on the same site. My gut feeling is "No, you can't". In technical terms, housing construction is (or should be) "flexible mass production". You do it affordably by using a standard design that can be customized in detail, using standard parts that can be made and bought in quantity.
If you are trying to recycle existing material from existing housing into new dwellings on the same ground, forget standard parts. Each new dwelling, of necessity, becomes an example of "unique product production", requiring a custom design to make use of the available parts. It's a lot more expensive to do it that way.
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Dennis