Picking Up the Pieces

When new homeowners asked historian Phyllis Learner for early photographs of their historic Beverly Hills mansion, she was more than happy to comply. But Learner’s delight turned to despair when she discovered that the vintage photos would be displayed at a “wrecking party” celebrating the home’s demolition.

Palatial mansions, historic homes, quaint cottages: The wrecking ball has no respect for pedigree in Southern California, where a “tear-down” house can just as easily be a mansion as a dilapidated shack.

Replacing old with new can chip away at Southern California history while heaping millions of tons of rubble onto crowded landfills.

“In most cases, the owners thought they were creating something more prominent than the original, and they do often end up with a beautiful house, but there’s no historical significance,” said Learner.

When a house can’t be saved, many of its parts can be. More and more demolition crews are practicing deconstruction, a labor-intensive but environmentally sound alternative to typical “smash and dash” demolition.

Instead of a bulldozer plowing down the structure and sending the rubble to the dump, the building is carefully dismantled, board by salvaged board, and the pieces are reused or recycled.

The drive to demolish is fueled in part by a booming economy and a record number of individuals making money in the stock market and Internet companies.

In addition, according to a study by the National Assn. of Home Builders, the average American house just keeps getting bigger. By June 2000, the average size of a new home rose to 2,260 square feet, a 50% increase over the typical 1970 residence.

American homeowners, hungry for space and volume, demand higher ceilings--9 feet instead of 8--and more windows. Living rooms are shrinking and the formal dining room is nearing extinction while master suites and family rooms are becoming de rigueur.

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With changing lifestyles and living patterns, it’s no wonder that houses built 30 years ago, let alone 100 years ago, often seem as passe as avocado green appliances. The answer, for many, is to tear down and start over.

It’s a continuing trend that has preservationists and heritage commissions up in arms. Sue Mossman, president of Pasadena Heritage, said that historical designation is one way of preserving the past. Still, in spite of designations, most houses in Pasadena could be demolished because of “inconsistencies and lack of strength of the ordinances.”

Fortunately, she added, “because of a rising tide of interest in historic homes and [the] relative premium of these homes, we’re finding that more and more people choose to keep them or even move them. It’s a big victory of the preservation movement.”

Even preservationists struggle with the “restore” versus “demolish” decision.

“Just because something’s old doesn’t mean it has to be saved,” said Kris Miller-Fisher, a Sierra Madre City Council member who took some heat when she filed for a permit to tear down a 1900s board and batten cabin in Sierra Madre. “Some properties are important to a culture or a town, and others are not as significant.”

Miller-Fisher, an architect who has taught historical preservation at Cal Poly Pomona, and her husband, an architect, plan to replace the cabin with a 3,200-square-foot California farmhouse-style residence, typical of Sierra Madre.

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Valerie Gruzin learned the hard way that not every house is worth saving when she ran into problems restoring a 1925 home in Santa Monica.

“In the course of remodeling, we kept discovering major problems with plumbing and electrical and rotten dry wall,” she said.

“Then we decided to add a second story and we had to structurally re-engineer the whole foundation of the old house. We spent a great deal of time and a great deal of money, all because we didn’t want to demolish,” she said.

After Gruzin’s experience, she was much less sentimental when she and her husband, Ron, purchased their next property. They deemed it a candidate for a tear-down and discovered that if they couldn’t save the house, they could at least save its pieces.

Gruzin, an environmentalist by inclination, hired a demolition company that specializes in deconstruction.

“The wood went to Mexico, the aluminum and steel were salvaged and the concrete was recycled,” said Gruzin.

When deconstructing a home, the most valuable parts are stripped out first. Mantles, attractive hardware, architectural ornaments, Batchelder tile, wrought iron gates and lighting fixtures are highly prized artifacts.

Some homeowners include the salvaged finds in restorations. Others use the pieces as decorative artwork, as if they were sculptures or paintings, or incorporate the castoff pieces into unique furniture.

Miller-Fisher, the Sierra Madre resident, salvaged most of the wood from her tear-down cabin.

“We want to reuse the Douglas fir as kitchen cabinets and possibly some furniture. The pine boards may be reused as baseboards or chair rails. The 100-year-old wood will add age and patina to our new house,” Miller-Fisher said.

But such labor-intensive measures are not for the faint of heart or shallow of pocket. Before the carpenters can work their magic with the century-old lumber, workers must remove the nails and strip the leaded paint.

“Needless to say,” said Miller-Fisher, “it’s expensive and time-consuming.”

Skip Willett, owner of Architectural Details in Pasadena, said there are three basic markets for salvage. The high-end market seeks out the architectural pieces and views them as art. The restoration market, primarily “purists restoring a home,” looks for the original, not a modern copy, for their meticulous restorations. And the third market, fixer-uppers on budgets, pursues toilets and doors at bargain prices.

Willett’s business is unusual because it targets all three markets, a practice he finds “all-consuming.” From a business standpoint, it would be easier to ignore the unprofitable bargain-hunter’s market, but Willett is passionate about preserving as many pieces as possible and “keeping them out of the dump.”

The practice of combining demolition companies and salvage yards, once as common as car dealers and repair shops, is disappearing.

“It costs money to salvage and to run the operation, and you can’t get enough customers,” said Pat Allen of Viking Equipment Corp. in Glendale. Viking pulled out of the salvage business about 25 years ago.

“A lot of demolition companies have gotten out of the salvage business,” agreed John Rigdon of McCloud Salvage. “It’s a function of labor cost, and it’s not as easy to sell the items. There’s no profit margin.”

Companies that have turned away from running their own salvage yards have discovered new ways to reduce dumping fees by finding new markets for used materials. Viking and McCloud both send lumber to Mexico, where there’s a booming market for the used 2-by-4s and 4-by-4s in the framing of houses.

On average, about 13,000 board feet of lumber can be plucked from a house.

“If you’re doing hand-wrecking, about 99% [of the lumber] is sent to Mexico. It depends on the residence. Larger homes with more lumber are more profitable to hand-wreck because you’re saving on dump fees. With smaller homes, it doesn’t pay. We just crush them with the tractor,” said Rigdon.

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In addition to lumber, companies that practice deconstruction often separate the metals, drywall, asphalt and concrete before marketing the materials to recycling businesses. A number of concrete recycling companies sprouted up after the Northridge earthquake, when 75% of the debris was recycled.

The Electronic Blue Book of Building and Construction lists more than 500 demolition companies from Santa Barbara to San Diego. According to the California Integrated Waste Management Board, construction and demolition waste make up as much as 31% of some California landfills.

Roni Java of the waste management board said that relatively low dumping fees in California, ranging from $15 to $25 a ton, make it easy for construction and demolition companies to justify the smash and dash method. In other places, such as Canada, where disposal costs can run as high as $100 per ton, the practice of deconstruction is a more popular option.

The city of Los Angeles requires contractors to practice deconstruction when demolishing a building to make way for a new library.

Fontayne Holmes, facilities director of the branch library construction program, said that in recent demolitions, 70% of the materials were recycled or reused; the goal is 80%.

Willett of Architectural Details, wearing the hats of preservationist, conservationist and environmentalist, is pleased with the growing emphasis on recycling and reusing homes. But in spite of his architectural salvage business, he says, a little piece of him dies every time he receives a call from a demolition company.

“The sum of the parts never adds up to the original whole,” he said.

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Susan Carrier is an Altadena freelance writer. Her e-mail address is scarrier3@aol.com.

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Local Used Building Material Sources

Architectural Detail

Used building materials

512 S. Fair Oaks Ave.

Pasadena, CA 91105

(626) 844-6670

Big Ten

Used building materials

757 W. Woodbury Road

Altadena, CA 91101

(626) 791-9747

European Reclamation

Architectural pieces from England and France

(Closed Saturdays and Sundays)

4524 Brazil St.

Los Angeles, CA 90039

(818) 241-2152

Freeway Building Materials

Used building materials

1124 S. Boyle Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90023

(323) 261-8904

Liz’s Antique Hardware

Antique hardware and lighting fixtures

453 S. La Brea Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

(323) 939-4403

Manchester Sash & Door

Antique Hardware

1228 W. Manchester Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90044

(323) 759-0344

Muff’s

Hardware and lighting

135 S. Glassell

Orange, CA 92866

(714) 997-0243

Ruins (two locations)

Iron, garden and architectural salvage

7220 Beverly Blvd.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

(323) 934-4396

1231-33 North Coast Highway

Laguna Beach, CA 92657

(949) 376-0025

Santa Fe Wrecking & Salvage

Used building materials

1600 S. Santa Fe Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90021

(213) 623-3119

Scavenger’s Paradise

Used building materials and other materials

5453 Satsuma Ave.

North Hollywood, CA 91601

(323) 877-7945

Getting Started on Deconstruction

If you’re tearing down or remodeling a home, a little planning can divert tons of waste from the landfill.

* Look for a contractor who practices deconstruction. Ask if the contractor can separate and recycle the materials.

* Research markets for materials. The Web site for the California Integrated Waste Management Board lists 500 resources for recycling construction and demolition materials. https://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/ConDemo/

* Call one of the resources for used building materials to arrange for pick up of architectural pieces and hardware.

* Consider donating pieces to one of the Habitat for Humanity Restores.

In some cases, Habitat can pick up the materials, and the donation is always tax deductible. Many of the materials are sold at a discount to Habitat for Humanity families.

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Habitat for Humanity operates three “ReStores” in Southern California:

Habitat for Humanity ReStore

2121 Atlanta Ave.

Riverside, CA 92507

(909) 784-9474

Habitat for Humanity of Orange County

2165 S. Grand Ave.

Santa Ana, CA 92705

(714) 434-6202

Habitat ReStore

3653 Costa Bella St.

Lemon Grove, CA 91945

(619) 463-0464