Picking up one of the three cordless drills sitting in charger cradles next to his desk, Nicholas went back out through the shop to start removing hardware from old doors.
His latest haul came from a house being torn down out in Concord Township up Auter Creek. It had six chimneys, eight bedrooms, and about a dozen interior doors that no one seemed to have any interest in.
The owner of the property was tearing down the old brick home to build a bigger, modern home, and while Nicholas had opinions about this practice, he'd seen it happen too many times to waste his tongue arguing with the fellow over what he wanted and what he thought he wanted. Offering him $5 per door and removal, he was happy to offer Nicholas free rein around the decaying home, which turned out to have more like fourteen of them, plus a pair of sliding pocket doors nailed into place that the current (and final) occupant hadn't even realized were there. Yesterday, he'd gone out with the old two-and-a-half ton truck and recovered the interior doors; it was agreed he'd come back in another week and do the potentially heavier demolition work it would take to remove the pocket doors, their framing, and possibly even the front door. But he'd gotten his fourteen for the price he'd asked, plus having to listen to almost two hours' worth of the occupant talking right behind him about the faults of old houses, how perfect his new home would be, and a few forays into politics that didn't go too far given the fact that Nicholas didn't agree or disagree with much, just offered lots of "mmmmm, hmmm mmmmpphh" in between the buzzings of the cordless and the whine of screws coming out of wood. He thought again that he should wear ear protection when he was doing this, but not for any damage done him by the drill's motor.
That all meant paying $75 could mean close to $1800 of income... but only if he got them quickly and painlessly off their hinges and out of the house. The hinges and doorlatches might bring even more sold separately, but some would be pulled off them, and others left on to maximize the revenue.
Natasha was good at talking to the homeowners they so often dealt with, not to argue them into taking a lower figure for the doors or whatever else they wanted us to get us on that job site for, but finding out from them what other decaying homes were in need of our "last rites". The salvage work had begun with her, and a passion she'd inherited from her grandmother, who had, when Natasha was very young, needed to tear down the house she had come to when first married, raised her children in, and returned to after her husband's funeral. So she did something that in that place, back in that day, was considered very odd: she hired a contractor who helped her take off the doors and the useable hardware, and then built a nice new home with all of the pieces she could salvage built into it, not just transferring furniture from old to new but re-using windows (a few), timbers (not many, but some), and the doors almost without exception from the previous house.
Grandmother had added zone heating, a stained glass window in her study from another old house she'd found at a rummage sale, and a chandelier that looked old but was selected from a catalog. She wasn't just interested in old for old's sake, and neither had been her granddaughter. But the reflexive wholesale tossing of old stuff because it was old became both a source of frustration (never anger), and the basis for a business. A pretty good business, Nicholas thought. It had started as indulgence on his part, and then he had become a full partner, and now it was his. Plus it became a church, or at least where a church met.
And that hadn't been his idea, either.
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