COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE ARE ALL THE HOUSTON POST-DEMO FRIDGE STEALS? 
“The appliances in [2311] Bartlett are brand new. So — when people in River Oaks, West U., etc., tear down a house that has very recently been updated, where do the appliances go? Do builders recycle them? Do they put them up on Craigslist? Seems like there should be some good bargains on high end appliances from these teardowns and remodels.” [Old School, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: How Braes Was My Valley] Photo of Houston appliance mural:Â Peter Lucas
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usually the demo company gets salvage rights to everything left in the building
I’m selling a property that’ll be demo’d. You can bet I’m taking EVERYTHING out (doorknobs, shutoff valves, light switches, etc. included). So appliances / HVAC will be the best thing to reuse
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No way that stuff gets tossed.
We are remodeling our new house we just bought. The fridge was 2014 and in good condition, but we’re bringing in the fridge from our old house because we like it better and it’s still fairly new. We offered the existing fridge to our contractor. One of his guys took it home along with some couches and a microwave that the previous owner left in the house. We could have sold it all, I suppose, but that takes time and effort and the remodel is already taking all our time and effort at the moment. We’re giving some furniture from our old house to my brother. Some stuff to friends. It makes us happy to give the stuff away to people who want it (and it relieves us of the effort of taking pictures, posting, fielding calls, shipping or inviting strangers into the house to pick it up, etc.)
In my (limited) remodel experience, depending on the condition I’ve either sold or given the old appliances to the contractor / work crew. One of the last crew really wanted my old toilet, oddly enough.
Most people donate everything salvageable to the Habitat Home Store in exchange for a tax deduction.
There was once a home on the corner of Hopkins and Hyde Park that was going to be demolished. I wondered over to it to peer in, and I noticed the back door was open. I went in and I noticed there were a couple of stained glass sash windows. My neighbor who was with me told me to take them. At that time, the house was empty, and some homeless people had gone in and used the place, most noticeable by the most foul smelling shit I had ever smelled by one of the homeless I guess, right in the living room.
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Anyway, I could not because of my guilty conscience, I just don’t steal things. I drove by for a few days to see the progress when one day I saw a huge backhoe tractor demolishing the place. And you guess it, I saw those stained glass windows busted to shards! Maybe I should have taken them in the spirit of recycling and reusing them!
@DBHTX if it was a pre-1992 toilet you should have kept it. They function much better than the low-flow toilets that are required today. — in fact the City of San Francisco has problems with low flow toilets causing solid waste back up in the sanitary sewer pipes because they were designed to dispose of waste with much greater water flow.
Anyway, that’s probably why they wanted it.
I usually give it to Habit, although a contractor wanted the dishwasher that we didn’t, so he bought it off us. Stuff that is low value (imo), I’d just give to contractors as well. They seem more than happy to take it and I’m happy to be rid of it.
@TXCON, I can vouch for that, when I moved from Katy into my 1911 Montrose home, I replaced the 1940’s era toilet seats, but kept the tanks, they fit perfectly on modern toilets. Have never had a problem with a clogged line, with four women in the house. You would not believe how much toilet paper four women use in one day! Well, mother, teenager, and two young kids who don’t know/care to ration.
@ Txcon: have a look at the recent Swamplot posting on water sources and consumption for the Houston area (http://swamplot.com/the-latest-piece-of-the-how-to-stop-houston-from-sinking-puzzle/2017-05-09/).
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Then ponder the relationship between that article and your comment.