As a part of our advocacy for increasing the awareness and the level of material reclamation, we’ve created our Exclaim Your Reclaim (EyR) campaign. We feature case studies of creative re-use, and include as much detail as possible, including the heritage of the materials—the family tree, if you will—of the wood. This is our second EyR, and this time it’s guest written by the creator herself, Kristin Mulzer. The first is here.
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By Kristin Mulzer
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For the past 18 months, I’ve been renovating a historic home in Savannah. With a background in furniture building, and a love of making stuff from junk, I’ve had a lot of fun designing and constructing unique pieces for the house: a kitchen island made from an old shop bench, shutters left in the courtyard became a headboard for the bedroom and mirrors in the dining room, a bathroom vanity made from an old dresser.
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I even pulled up some pine floor boards from a utility room and had a friend (master wood turner Ryan Hartig) turn a sink for the master bathroom. When I decided that a porch swing would fit perfectly under my new deck, I knew I wanted to make something unique that would beautifully fit into my 156 year old courtyard.
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With a little creativity, generous friends, and a city that provides, I made a plan to build a swing out of old doors, and began collecting parts.
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1. A contractor friend of mine who restores and remodels Victorian District homes generously gave me two doors from his collection. These doors comprise the main body of the swing.
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2. There’s a construction dumpster a few blocks down from my house where I fished out the wood for the side panels.
3. My friend Paul is renovating an old railroad worker’s house. He graciously gave me a 150 year old stud to use for the arm rests.
4. I needed two more support pieces to reinforce the structure. I threw the dog in the car and drove around the neighborhood, looking for scraps. My eye was drawn by a construction dumpster, but when I parked to look into it, I noticed a pile of old studs next to the house. I asked the man working on the house if I could have one. I grabbed a 2×6 and split it to make it work as my under-swing supports. (the houses in the area were built circa 1850)
5. A retired rope from a climbing gym in Michigan.
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After collecting materials, I set up in my courtyard. Armed with a circular saw, an orbital sander, and a power drill, I built the swing on Tuesday, coated it with poly on Wednesday, and hung it on Thursday.
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That night, friends and I tested its load-bearing capacity with some after dinner drinks. I was pleased to find out that it comfortably—and safely—swings four.
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