REPURPOSE, RECLAIM, SUSTAIN

I acquired my first antique when I was in the third grade, an old tea chest bought somewhere along the coast of Maine.  I still have it and Cameron uses it in his room as a bed-side table.  The kids in my family grew up poking around in antique stores up and down the east coast and later all over Europe when my family re-located to Germany and France.  I thought that all families antiqued together.

The first gift that Larry gave me (when he was 16 and I was 17) was a hundred year old Limoge locket bought on our first date at an antique store in Clinton, NJ.  Old stuff and the joy of the hunt is in our family's DNA.

When we started buying land sometimes the major selling point was an old barn, a historic fixer-upper house or a really cool old tobacco barn full of ancient walnut slabs, wormy chestnut planks, and tobacco drying slats.  Much of our home is decorated not in period antiques, but in repurposed stuff.  The bar in our family room is made of one of those walnut slabs and propped up by a super thick grape vine, repurposed as a walking stick and then repurposed again as a bar holder upper.

Sometimes things have to be torn down to begin a new life.  (I know, all sorts of spiritual connotations here.)
Realizing that a barn structure is dangerous and can't be saved doesn't by any means ready it for the burn pile.
Floyd Virginia Land recently bought a 100 acre piece of property known as Sugar Run Farm.   The property has a great picnic shelter and captured spring as well as pasture, woods, and horse trails.   We tried to save the wonderful old barn but realized that the structure was unsafe and the foundation was no good.  So we called in our good friend Mike Whiteside from Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke to carefully tear down the barn and reclaim the wood for bookcases or cabinets or flooring or some other cool architectural feature/creation.

Reclaiming may be a hip concept right about now.  We have all suffered through a generation of  waste and disposability.  I believe we are craving history and a connection to things that have a connection to another simpler time.  "Stuff" just isn't cutting it anymore.  We want objets d'art, not mountains of plastic.  So soapbox time. Reclaim something.  Find a way to share your unwanted items with others.  Create something out of something else, even if it doesn't make sense to your neighbors.   Get your art groove on; think outside the box.  Not because the concept is cool but because you are.