Waste not - Want not...Is that a boat?!?!

The trash just keeps piling up around here. No, this isn’t my yard (a few months ago it would have been hard to distinguish the between the landfill, shown here, and my back yard from all the construction debris). I was shocked to see how much good material gets trashed by the building contractors. While I was tempted to save all the material from the “dump pile”, I had to stop myself. Don’t want my yard to look like this. I tried to recycle …like the some of the old deck that was torn down was cut into smaller pieces and made into a platform underneath the lean-to shelter along the back of our shop to store garden tools and a potting bench. Another small piece was used as a step for the workshop. The (6) 12’x3’ roof panels from the sunroom were given to someone to that intended to use them make a deer stand (these things will be great insulators). The frame/doors/etc. for the sunroom was taken by a friend that intends on reconstructing it at her house. The vinyl fencing is now flanking a driveway 75 miles from here. The doors, drawer fronts and facings from the pine kitchen cabinets were given to another friend that intends on incorporating them into her long-awaited (can’t wait to see it) kitchen remodel. The glass storm door and frame was given to my sister for use on the front of her house. The new back door and frame the contractor installed that was replaced by me because it opened the wrong way (I had to pay for the new one – pay attention to the door swings on your plans. Apparently, if you approve the plans, you approve the door swings and will have to pay to replace doors if they don’t open the way you want…even if they open into the cabinets instead of into the room…don’t get me started) was also given to my sister to replace her back door. All of the drawer boxes from the old kitchen cabinets (drawer fronts given to a friend) are being used to store items in the shop (works out great). The bathroom vanities are in the process of being reworked so they can be reused – built new drawer boxes (the old ones were built from pressed board), replaced the pressboard bottom with ¾ cabinet-grade plywood, refinish, etc. I’ve used numerous items from the dump pile and tried to reuse or give away good items rather than sending them to the landfill. In the end, the task became overwhelming and, I’m ashamed to say, too much trouble. We ended up making numerous trips to the county landfill to throw away “stuff” that someone may have found useful…a lot of it was just trash but some of it… Hey, at least we aren’t the ones that dumped this 16’ boat