I had heard about Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore… it’s a community shop where builders and remodelers and stores will donate perfectly useful extras and overstocks of building materials for people to use. It’s a fabulous way to find building materials on the “cheap” and it’s awesome because it keeps unwanted material out of the landfill. Many larger communities have one, check with your local HfH and see if there is one in your area.

I’ve never been and I wish I had gone there a lot sooner, I would have definately saved a ton of cash. But now that I know about it, I’m sure to make it a destination often as I continue to improve and upgrade my little Moby.

Jessy and I went over to look for a couple old windows for my two cold frames that Tim is building for me!!! (I got to see them today and they look fantastic, but I’m jumping ahead a bit.) I needed the glass to cover the tops of the frames and we had checked with new glass and other options and they just weren’t working out. I had gotten some very old glass windows from a neat guy here in town, but the frames were a little too rough to use. They were just too brittle and old and we broke a couple trying to get it to work.

When we first walked in, I just knew we were in a wonderful place. It was like the ultimate builders thrift store!

Tons of windows, doors, tiles, sinks, cabinets, appliances, furniture, hardware, and just whatever else.

Beautiful left over tiles in all sorts of sizes! I bought six big 13 x 13 inch wide tiles to glue on the top of this old desk that I’m making into a garden table! 70 cents each. Just for fun, I checked at Lowes later on and they were selling the same tiles for over $8 each!!! I need a few more to finish the table, and I know where I’m going to get them!

SHUTTERS!!!! Oh my! TONS OF SHUTTERS! I couldn’t believe it. I wish I had known, I would have saved at LEAST $100 on shutters! I do know where I’m going to get the shutters for the last windows in the Moby! I have four more windows to shutter, and they had lots of the same green shutters that I am using!!! WOW!

Just oodles of windows. And resonably priced. These are decent double hung, energy saving windows. Most with screens and all. They don’t take in the old single pane windows anymore, because of how awful they are with heat loss and all that. I think when the time comes to upgrade some of the windows in my Moby, I will be going there to snoop around with my measurements!

They had a whole bunch of these thin, bi-fold doors. And I believe they would make awesome raised beds! Some have neat raised panel details! They have to be at least 6 feet tall, and I would suspect they are closer to 7 or 8 feet. Some were composite plastic, but many were good old wood. I am definitely going to revisit that idea when we get to making some more of the raised beds.

But this find was so exciting I almost couldn’t breath! Whole cabinets for $10! Nice solid cabinet frames. Some even had the doors to all the cupboards! And drawers! Since I only need 110 inches of counters for the bottom of my kitchen row, I could EASILY make do nicely with some of these cabinets. When the time comes to redo my kitchen, I am SO going to be coming here first. They had quite a few. The fellow there said they get a lot of kitchen cabinets from remodels. People with too much money and all, go and get these $10,000+ kitchen remodels and very often ditch perfectly nice cabinets in the reworking. Since I don’t need a lot of cabinets, I just might be able to really save a TON of money.

In the end, I was a good girl and only got the windows I needed for the cold frames and 6 of the big pretty tiles. I have a ton of other ideas that I can’t wait to try out and get parts and pieces from the ReStore! We are absolutely going to try using some of those closet doors if the price is right. I’m going to price out lumber and then check the ReStore for doors. But if it’s close, I’m still going to consider ReStore because I love that it’s good materials being reused as well as helping out a great charity!

Oh, it’s going to be a FUN spring here at the Moby!!! So many plans!!! Just have to remember to do them one at a time!