hed: He Turns Yesterday’s Junk Into Today’s Treasures

In a pile of rusted, beat-up junk, Fred Balak can always find a diamond.

He reaches into a cardboard box filled with rust-encrusted wrought-iron scrolls and pulls one out, looking at it thoughtfully. He passes it back and forth between his hands, his fingers familiar with the rough texture.

“You could combine a few of these and form a border around a cabinet,” he says. “Or you could just attach one on top, and it becomes an ornament. I love these things just as they are, as sculpture pieces. There are so many different kinds and shapes.”

What most people would throw out this furniture maker sees as outstanding pieces of decorative history waiting to be reborn.

Through his eyes, architectural salvage yards are treasure troves of inspiration. Here, among cracked, dusty radiators, orphaned windows and stray bits of molding, Balak, 61, can barely contain his enthusiasm.

He decides the fate of such noble refuse. Balak’s forte is taking materials such as leaded windows, shutters, table legs, rusty nails, chewed-up cabinets and battered doors and turning them into sturdy buffets, cupboards, cabinets, benches, armoires, candleholders, tables and chests.

His furniture may start with one element--an old cupboard door with a window and original hardware. Balak then builds a cabinet around it from old wood. The end result is a seamless fusing of disparate pieces.

Or he might start with a decrepit oil-soaked factory workbench, gut it, refinish the redwood top, whitewash the pine tongue-and-groove front and sides, and transform it into a country buffet. He works his alchemy for clients who covet custom items, charging $150 to $6,000, depending on the piece and the work involved.

“I enjoy the process of putting things together, of taking a door and building a cabinet around it,” he says. “There is so much satisfaction and fulfillment in doing that, especially when you know that it was something that somebody discarded that has been transcended.”

Balak came to full-time furniture design only recently. A former sales manager for a dental insurance company in Los Angeles, he left that three years ago, traded a Westside home for a downtown loft and set up an extensive workshop downstairs.

There, an old rabbit hutch rests on a dolly, waiting for its next incarnation. His current project is a custom cabinet incorporating molding from a 60-year-old fireplace mantel, old banister spindles and a section cut from a chair railing.

Balak learned woodworking from his father, who did it as a hobby, and from an aunt, who was a contractor.

“I devoured books and learned by experience,” Balak says, “but even to this day when I have a question about something, I’ll call my aunt.”

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He first made pieces for himself, then friends would come over and ask him for something similar. Word of mouth spread, and his client roster grew. After several years it was time to make a decision--insurance or furniture. He offers this understatement: “It was nice to step out of the corporate world.”

Architectural Detail in Pasadena is one of Balak’s favorite salvage yard haunts. He’s a regular, visiting monthly to peruse the stock. On a recent day he stopped by with wife JoAnne, an artist, and within minutes had mentally transformed a number of items.

“Now this,” he says, gesturing toward a large rectangular leaded-glass window, “can be turned horizontally and made into a headboard for a bed. That would be absolutely incredible. And this,” he points to a tall, hefty wooden post, “could be cut in half, and it could be the side pieces for the bed. It’s beginning to take shape already.”

He sees a filigree radiator cover as a door on a cabinet, Victorian ceiling tins as the top of a coffee table, table legs as candleholders or appliqued ornaments on a cabinet, a rusted gate hinge as a coatrack, and a reception desk as a dining room buffet. Prices here range from $20 for a claw foot from an antique bathtub to $250 for a small, weathered cabinet to $500 for a desk.

Scant few things are turned down. But Balak won’t even look at anything made with particle board--it must be solid wood. And the wood must be sound, not rotted or termite-infested. Odd chips or splits don’t bother him. They might be left as is, replaced or covered up.

Rust, flakes of old paint and chipped wood are often untouched. Like gray hair and laugh lines they have been earned and should be celebrated.

“What makes me so crazy,” Balak says, “is there is so much. You can be on overload when you come in here. My wife and I will leave here sometimes and be so exhausted. There is no end to the possibilities.”

The possibilities become crystal clear after a trip to the Balaks’ downtown loft. In some 2,600 square feet they’ve created a cozy nest that is a testament to the power of redemption.

In the dining room is that former factory workbench, now a massive buffet with copious storage space. Balak even left intact a metal inset that probably held a vice. A slate-blue pantry cupboard began as a solitary door with a slightly cracked window and vintage hardware. Balak built the rest of the cabinet around it.

The bathroom holds a large whitewashed chest made from old wood with split pieces of banisters and table legs used as decorative accents. A display cabinet in the living room that holds antique toys is virtually the same as the couple found it, with its mottled, peeling red, green and cream paint intact.

Sometimes salvaged items stand alone as art pieces. A tabletop tableau includes a rusted piece of curved metal, a fragment of molding and a dried twig. Above it, mounted to the wall, is an apothecary chest with drawers made from Davidoff cigar boxes that Balak scooped up at a garage sale.

The couple combined their talents on some pieces, such as a side table whose top is one of JoAnne’s framed paintings. Her studio takes up part of the loft.

“When you’re involved with this, you can never relax,” she explains. “You’re always looking in somebody’s trash or something.”

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Balak loves the process of customizing furniture for clients. Some are specific about what they want, down to the last nail, while others grant carte blanche. Some bring him their own salvaged items or family heirlooms to be incorporated in a piece. He asks what a cabinet or hutch will be used for and prefers seeing the space where it will ultimately dwell.

“I look at each piece as a work of art,” he says. “The people who receive it adopt it as their own. It’s not like you put it out there and you don’t know who it’s going to end up with or what they’re going to use it for.”

Clients Viktor Budnik and wife Janie Hewson commissioned a substantial armoire for the bedroom using salvaged shutters for doors and old moldings for trim.

“We have kind of a funky Venice beach cottage from the ‘20s,” Budnik explains, “and we redid it back to that era. But it has no closets, so we needed something for our clothes and our collections. And we wanted something kind of rustic that looked like it had been in the house forever.”

The couple, friends of the Balaks, first looked at contemporary pieces but found nothing they liked that fit their specifications.

“Having him customize the piece was wonderful,” Budnik adds. “He really knew visually how to make it work in the house.”

One more touch was added: JoAnne painted scenes of Italian hillsides on the front panels, inspired by the spot where Budnik and Hewson were married.

“One of the hardest parts for me is letting things go,” Balak admits. “You make something, you put a lot of time into it, and it’s gone. Sometimes I try to give myself a week to just enjoy the finished piece before it’s delivered. But afterward there’s a period of time when it’s almost like postpartum. It’s like I’ve lost something--a part of me has been lost.”

When the pull between creator and creation is too strong, the piece stays. That dining room buffet, for instance, was originally meant for someone else. Balak made him another--different--one.

“I know it’s going to happen with the rabbit hutch,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s going to be very, very difficult to see it go. But then you just get on with it. You’re on to the next thing.”

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Jeannine Stein can be e-mailed at socalliving@latimes.com.