Winners fired by old wood, creative spark
Reuse Inspiration Contest draws imaginative entries
Wood is a wondrous thing, especially in the hands of creative people.
Many of the winners of the 2017 Reuse Inspiration Contest, which is sponsored and judged by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Construction Junction, began their projects with doors and other wood items they found at CJ, a nonprofit retailer of architectural artifacts and surplus material in Point Breeze. But the six winners also found their raw materials — and inspiration -- in less likely places, like a library dumpster.
Erin Gardner of Etna wasn’t sure what she would do with the discarded paperbacks and children’s books. “I just couldn’t let all those books get thrown away when I knew I could find a way to repurpose them,” she wrote in her contest entry.
She began experimenting, folding the paperbacks into different patterns, but ended up throwing them on a table in frustration. That’s when she noticed that the splayedopen books made interesting, almost snowflake-like patterns. Ms. Gardner cut the books with a scroll saw and hand-cut and folded the pages into flowers and other shapes. The result: beautiful three-dimensional wall art.
She was one of three winners in the art category. All of the winners received free tickets to Saturday’s Steel City Big Pour, a beer festival fundraiser for Construction Junction. Here’s more on the other winners in the art and renovation categories:
Kelly Mullen made her first visit to Construction Junction, looking for something to replace “the ugliest coffee table the world had ever seen.” She bought a small paneled door, cut it down to size and used the leftover scraps to make a legs and feet. Her plan was to fill the center with tile, but she couldn’t find any that she liked.
So the table sat unfinished in the basement for months, until another trip to CJ and a related business, the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse. There Ms. Mullen found pieces of colored glass and mirror shards, which she then spent many hours arranging and gluing, and filled the gaps with grout. A coat of resin protects the top.
“I’m really quite proud of this coffee table,” she wrote. “I had never built anything before, but this experience challenged me to acquire new skills, which I have since used in other areas.”
Mike Takos of West Mifflin is a veteran tinkerer, and skylines made from repurposed materials are his thing. While visiting from Florida, his sister admired one he called “Big City” and asked for one of Pittsburgh’s skyline. He made several, and two were the judges’ favorites:
“Pittsburgh Rules” is made from rulers, protractors and other measuring devices. “Moonlight at the Point” began as a silhouette cut from a discarded shelf and a dark sky painted inside an oak desk drawer. The fountain, which one judge thought was a meditating human figure, was created from a mesh strainer and utensils.
The winners in the renovation category are almost as artistic. Laurie Bonnett and Mark Nolan moved to Lawrenceville last year from Illinois. They loved their 1858 house, but not its decaying fence.
Walking down the aisles of Construction Junction, Mr. Nolan pointed to a pallet of 7-foot-long steel pipes and said: “Why don't you make a fence out of those?” Ms. Bonnett didn’t see it at first, but soon realized it was no pipe dream. After many hours drilling holes in wooden rails, they had a Steeltown fence like no other.
“Our fence has 522 holes, 261 poles and as many corks — many are dated for a special occasion,” they wrote. “With the poles left, we are building a pergola for the backyard! Nothing goes unused in our home!”
Peter Alt of Upper St. Clair collects vintage sports cars but lacked the garage space to protect them. Then he discovered the wonder of wooden garage doors.
Making many trips, he loaded nearly 90 door panels into a most unlikely transport — his 1988 Porsche. At home, he replaced the wood panels with glass and built enclosures beneath his wood deck, staining the wood to match the deck’s redwood.
“I loved reusing the doors and am so pleased with the outcome,” he wrote.
We suspect his Mustangs, Corvette and Allante are happy, too.
Jay Behm might have won just for his careful restoration of seven 1830s doors he found at Construction Junction and installed in his 1860s house in Volant.
“We had to add 2 inches to the height of each door (people were shorter in 1830) and had a local artist match the original grain paint and blend it,” he wrote in his entry.
Then he clinched it with a stair railing made from discarded pool cues and a ship’s yardarm. It leads to — of course — the pool room. Last but hardly least is
Karl Zellars, who works at Construction Junction and creates beautiful furniture from the old wood he sees every day. The judges opted to give him an honorable mention (he already has tickets to the Big Pour) after seeing pictures of several projects. Our favorites were a bed frame made from maple, oak barn beams and black walnut door jambs, and a side table he fashioned from pieces of a black walnut door. In his entry, he said it was inspired by George Nakashima.
“I feel a great sense of pride in this piece. I wanted to create something that was almost strictly about lines and the beauty of the grain…. I wanted to get lost in the effort of clarity and random design (inspired by another but still my own) and I feel as though I succeeded.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Kevin Kirkland: kkirkland@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1978.