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FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2013
Vol. CXXIV, No. 105
OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE CITY OF TACOMA Devoted to the Courts, Real Estate, Finance, Industrial Activities, and Publication of Legal Notices
Published Since 1890
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A New Life For Old Homes Seattle's Earthwise Architectural Salvage expands to Tacoma
Posted online Thurs., May 30 Article and Photos By Todd Matthews, Editor Kurt Petrauskas remembers a period more than 20 years ago when he started looking at his job a little differently. Petrauskas was a general contractor working on high-end home renovations and demolitions in Seattle. Work was busy and good, but very routine. At one point, he was getting ready to dump old building materials from a job site into a landfill when he paused. "The traditional way is to bring in an excavator, a bulldozer, knock the thing down, crunch it into toothpicks, and take it to the landfill," Petrauskas recalled one rainy morning recently in Tacoma. "I would sit there at the dump and take really nice single-pane windows, nothing wrong with them, and I would look down into the pit, and I just couldn't do it." Petrauskas was so sure the material he was throwing away was perfectly salvageable that he decided to buy an old house and completely gut and renovate it using the scraps he scavenged and scrounged from demolition job sites. Sometimes he would drive around the city scouting for home demolitions and ask if he could haul the old lumber, doors, and windows away. Other times he would go to the local landfill, scope out building materials other contractors were getting ready to toss, and ask if he could haul some of it away. "I would scale out with more than I came in there with," said Petrauskas, laughing today at how odd he must have looked back then in the eyes of other contractors. Still, Petrauskas, who graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in biology before moving to the Pacific Northwest, knew he wasn't the only person who saw value in old building materials. In 1991, he opened Earthwise Architectural Salvage in Seattle long before "reduce, reuse, recycle" became a mantra. "My niece says, 'Uncle Kurt, you were green before they even intended the word green,'" he said. He quickly learned there was a market for salvaged building materials. Over the past 20 years, Earthwise Architectural Salvage has been a destination for DIY homeowners, interior designers, contractors, architects, carpenters, and artists. You might have even seen some of the company's salvaged lumber, iron work, and vintage light fixtures in many Seattle shops, restaurants, and bars, including Starbucks-owned Roy Street Coffee and Tea, Grim's Restaurant and Lounge, Oddfellows
"We've been up in Seattle for over 20 years, so we're pretty embedded there," says Earthwise Architectural Salvage owner Kurt Petrauskas, who expanded to Tacoma last summer. "Tacoma's got a great history. It's actually older than Seattle. I think Tacoma has the market. I think people will appreciate what we do down here, as they do up in Seattle. Everybody who comes in the store really enjoys it and likes it, so we're starting to gain a little bit of traction in the area. I think the more people realize we are here, the more encompassing the clientele will be. I know they're here. There are very creative people in Tacoma." Cafe and Bar, Rudy's Barbershop, and The Kingfish Cafe. Earthwise Architectural Salvage expanded to Tacoma last summer. The store, located at 628 East 60th St., on Tacoma's East Side, is managed by Tacoma native Tracy Earles and Karen Carston, and occupies two floors and approximately 14,000 square feet of the Hillsdale Lumber Company. Earles and Carston have been busy promoting the Tacoma store to locals by setting up booths at the Tacoma Home and Garden Show in January, the 6th Annual South Sound Sustainability Expo in March, and Earth Day Weekend events at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in April. "There's a lot of homeowner interest in locating replacement windows, hardware, doors, et cetera for their older homes," said Historic Tacoma Board Vice President Sharon Winters. "Up until the Earthwise move to Tacoma, we all had to go to Seattle or Olympia to dive through salvaged architectural materials. Earthwise provides an alternative to buying new reproduction building materials and supports
an ethic of re-use. While purchasing new materials is sometimes the best choice, we support re-use because we think it is sound environmental practice and because we love the patina of old building stock." Earlier this year, Historic Tacoma raved over Earthwise Architectural Salvage in an e-mail newsletter to its members, highlighting its "wealth of small to large items from brass doorknobs to gently used kitchen cabinets and hard to find reclaimed beams" and an impressive "range of materials that were very well-organized and attractively merchandised. We spotted a number of great vintage lighting fixtures, some very cool gym flooring (some pieces had letters -- gimme a "K"), and we're still thinking about the appropriate installation for that lavender toilet." The Tacoma Daily Index recently spoke with Petrauskas about his company, its expansion to Tacoma, and his interest in historic preservation. ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF EARTHWISE ARCHITECTURAL SALVAGE I did all kinds of different things before I was a general contractor in Seattle doing high-end remodels. We were just throwing this stuff away. It was part of the natural progression of doing the work. You go in there, you take out what the client wants removed, and you put in the new stuff they want. I was throwing this stuff out. I got married and bought a complete dump house and totally gutted it and built the whole house out of used building materials. I did all the woodwork out of salvaged fir. I said, "There's got to be more people like me." There was nobody in the area that was doing any of this. I was just using the material that was left over on CONTINUED the job site. I would bring ON PAGE 2