Recycling at its Finest

In our Amish community, it is quite common to recycle and reuse anything possible. When an Amish family builds on to their current home, they may try to save old 2 x 4's or salvage siding from somewhere to accomplish the task. Because my husband was raised this way, I believe he now recycles anything "old."

In May, he and I became owners to a new hand-crafted log home, shipped from British Columbia. However, at that time, the home was simply log walls and later a roof. We are truly on a budget, and always looking for ways to cut costs. We have been searching for about three years for an old barn to tear down so that we could use the siding on the gable ends of our home. Finally in June of this year, we caught a completely lucky break. A man contacted the Arcola Chamber of Commerce to see if they knew of any Amish woodworkers interested in an old barn with which they could make furniture. Because their staff knew of no one, they called the Illinois Amish Interpretive Center. I was elated to receive the call!

We drove about 45 minutes to see the barn. It's true date is not known, but what we do know is that the owner, now 80, moved to the farm at a very young age and the barn was "very old" then, he claimed. We estimate that it was about 150 years old. The beams and posts were held together with wood pins (of which and none broke during deconstruction), the shutters, chutes, ladders, tongue and groove floors, barn siding and car siding were all in excellent condition, except for one side that was damaged in a tornado last year. We began deconstructing the barn, salvaging everything possible. The 12 x 12 hand-hewn beams had to wait until final demolition.

We have now filled our garage and one of my dad's outbuildings with the deconstructed barn that will be used in countless ways on our new home. We have a new pantry door--a weathered barn door, car siding to line many of our interior rooms, barn siding for the exterior gables, a ladder to our loft, flooring for our office, beams for our porch, shudders for decoration, and much more.

This morning, my husband and I unloaded the last of the beams. I couldn't help but to think that his Amish roots were the reason we took on such an ambitious project, keeping recycling and frugality in mind all the while.