Building Materials--Secondhand

Second hand materials are ‘pre-loved’ items which can be recycled or reused. For example, there are massive savings to be made if you can find a tradesperson who can fit a second-hand door in your new verandah for one quarter the cost of a new one. Second hand materials come in all shapes and sizes, including windows, bricks and even wooden flooring.

You can buy (and sell) any number of second hand building and construction products: tiles, windows, doors, barbecues, timber, bricks, sinks, kitchens, steel, appliances, cladding, plumbing and flooring. Similar to the ‘used parts’ car yard, you can either visit these second hand materials warehouses by finding them locally or by browsing online. Some outlets specialise in materials from a particular era, so if you are after a 1920s chimney crown or bullnose verandah roofing, you know where to look. While this may have been a specialist area of construction ten years ago, the advent of reality TV shows based on renovating means that there are any number of places that specialise in recycled materials.

Fewer potentially useful materials end up in landfill these days, instead they are ending up in our homes. Pre-loved items, such as windows and doors, may be better priced than new products – and there’s always the chance that you will get a really expensive item cheaply, simply because the owner does not want to make that trip to the tip, which usually costs. A good example of where older is better are old floorboards, which can be much wider than modern varieties which makes them far more desirable. Old doors may be made of oak, teak or ironbark under that thickly painted surface.

Second hand building materials are an environmentally sound, money-wise way of building or renovating. You can get the effect you want at a fraction of the price and you don’t have to accept the assembly line methods of construction that come with brand new materials, so you can innovate while you renovate.