The four-bay garage that I spent thousands of happy hours in over the past 13 years— building things, making art, nourishing my soul through work— has been demolished. It took the workers about 30 minutes to knock it down, and a few more hours to load up the debris and cart it off.
It was a great building for me, and now that’s it’s gone, a new chapter begins.
Why Did I Demolish My 4 bay garage?
I made 100s of pieces of art and furniture in the garage from 2013 to 2021. I put my heart and soul into my work. I loved the space and it gave me room to be creative. I built a 12 x 12 tiny house 40 feet away and lived in it for 8 years. I hosted an annual art event, Fringe Fest, exhibiting my art in the garage while other artists spread out their work under tents along the driveway..
Covid put a crimp in the hose of my revenue from live shows, and weary of the grind of cranking out product to make a living as an artist, I pivoted to real estate investing.
Now, a few years later I’m building a new house with a two-car garage, plus a 500 square foot tiny house for my mom. I’m not giving up my reclaimed ethos– we will incorporate reclaimed and salvaged materials into both houses. But it is time for me to have a bit more indoor space. Some elbow room as well as space for my partner and for our kids to visit.
The Salvaged Ethos Lives On–What I Saved Before Demo
My brother helped me to strip pine planks from the outer walls. It was a board and batt building- vertical boards with 1.5” batts covering the gaps. We will re-use the caramel-hued yellow pine as baseboards and door and window trim for my mom’s new tiny house.
Roofing- I got up onto the roof with a drill and hex bit and pulled a couple hundred roofing screws out. After that I clambered around up there and slid the 12’ long, 3’ wide metal panels down and stacked them for later use. I’ll incorporate the metal into future projects- a gazebo, a treehouse, a carport for my mom.
The antique french door to the gallery (which became my outdoor office after I stopped selling art) has been saved. It’s 100 years old and sagging a bit, but cool, and it has the original knobs which are unique, a spiraling brass pattern.
I wrestled the 3 massive work benches out of there. One of them is an antique with a cast iron frame and 2” thick work table and lower shelf. It probably weighs twice as much as I do! There’s also a 12’ work bench made of pine, and a 5’ maple butcher’s block with metal frame. These now sit in a cluster under some trees, tarped for protection from the rain.
The History of the Garage
This garage was one of the major reasons I purchased my three-acre property in 2013. I was living in Durham and making art and furnishings out of reclaimed wood, and stuff was piling up in my back yard, overflowing from the 8′ x 12′ shed I’d built to contain it. My neighbor was complaining about the power tools as I worked into the evening on summer nights.
I wanted a place in the country where I could work in peace and store all of my salvaged materials. I was also due to get out of the hubbub of Durham, but that’s another story recounted in my tiny house posts. When I went to look at the property, the garage was the first thing I saw at the end of the curved gravel driveway. A low slung, reddish-brown building with a shed roof made of second hand tin. There was a large tree branch that had fallen and poked a hole through the roof with a trash can set below to collect the rain water.
The 4 bay was built by a father and son who owned the property before me. The father liked to work on cars, and that was the primary use that it had. Funnily enough, his car of choice was a Geo, which had a brief day in the sun in the US decades ago. He had multiple of them in various stages of repair. After the father passed away, I bought the property from his son.
It was an upgrade for me– perfect for storing my reclaimed wood and housing a workshop. I happily made folk art and furnishings out of reclaimed wood and found objects there for the next 8 years.
What’s Next, and What Happened to All of My Salvaged Stuff?
For years I had a mini salvage yard. I’ve let most of it go. My metal yard was donated to two guys who make money off scrap metal. They estimated they’d make a couple thousand off of the haul from my place that filled a pickup bed and a 12′ trailer, stacked to 8′ off the ground and strapped down.
Rusty tin roofing, ornate metal bed frames, all manner of pipes and tubing, and an array of artifacts found in barns, basements, attics, dumpsters, and by the side of the road– car parts, mirrors, trellises, anchors, trumpets, golf clubs, electronic gadgets, old metal toys, a tricycle, electrical boxes, license plates, box springs. I’ve scaled down to a couple of rubbermaid tubs of stuff.
Since I’m no longer actively making art and furnishings at scale, I’ve thinned my reclaimed wood stock- burned a lot of it that I was probably never going to use in big bonfires. I sold off antique doors– I had about 50 of them at one point. I’m down to 13, and I’ll use some of those in the new houses. I’ve saved some choice pieces. Just in case.
The Farewell Paean
Thank you garage. And thanks to the father and son who built it and imbued it with the energy of fun and creativity. I’m grateful for the people who bought my art and furniture and encouraged me. I’m grateful for the experience I had of supporting myself financially by working with my hands and making art from stuff I found. Now I turn the page…
For more stories about minimalist life and recycling materials, check out this post on tiny house life.
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