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Could you see maybe barn lumber on the wall?
I like that.
Something to draw your eye up.
They say one man's trash is another man's treasure.
[ Telephone rings ]
I'm the other man.
Good afternoon. West End.
DON: I'm Don Short, owner of West End Architectural Salvage.
We have a 50,000-square-foot warehouse
packed with stuff we renovate, reinvent,
and use to redecorate the homes of our clients.
What I want to do is pop this glass out.
Okay.
Okay?
And that'll be good for the nightstands.
Where you see dust and rust...
We can do $125.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
...I see the building blocks of America.
To me, that's a headboard.
Yeah.
We turn what others have thrown away
into cool, custom pieces right here in Iowa.
What if we suspended them off the face?
I think this piece for the side table between the two chairs.
HAL: What do you think?
STU: Wow!
LAUREN: You're kidding me!
Is this our bedroom?
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
DON: Where are you putting that, boys?
JOE: We have an idea.
Seriously?
They have absolute -- Hal, turn it around.
Go ahead, Hal.
HAL: No, you came up with the idea.
We're gonna make a bench.
Because we are designers.
Really?
Okay, Don, this is the idea.
You have the headboard. It's really tall.
I mean, what is it -- like, from 1880?
The top piece is missing.
We don't have the side rails anymore, either.
It's not selling. We have to do something with it.
It's just a ***.
[ Laughs ]
I agree. We've had it a year and a half. It hasn't moved.
Lots of people looked at it.
If we were to cut this in half
and actually flip-flop it so this is going to become a side.
So, you guys think we really want to cut up
a really interesting antique piece like that?
Well, the thing is, Don, is it's not selling.
That bed was from Lincoln's house.
Whatever.
Whatever.
Seriously, it was.
Mary Todd will understand.
DON: Old Victorian beds are very hard to sell.
So this is the -- That's the headboard.
Right, yes.
They're not sized to today's mattresses,
so most people can't use them as a bed.
I'm cool with that -- reluctantly cool with it.
So, if you want to get it over to the elevator,
I'll take it down to Rex 'cause he likes my drawings.
All right, let's go.
Lift with your legs.
Don, if you could get your butt down here,
your 11:00 appointment is here.
So we'll just pull up a chair over here,
get a little discussion going on what you're looking for.
Oh, you brought pictures for us.
So, this is our bedroom...
Awesome.
...that we don't like.
What West End Salvage has become
is not only an antique store,
but we will custom-build something for you.
It's kind of just, like, big-box-store stuff,
and I like to see character in our furniture.
The room is just extremely brown. There's no "wow" factor.
You walk in, and you almost
don't even notice that it has high ceilings.
I love beams on the ceiling, something to draw your eye up.
I love the look of an old lodge or an old loft.
Okay, do you have a budget
that you're wanting to stay under or within?
We definitely have decided we want to do things right,
so we've kind of put it
somewhere in the neighborhood of about $10,000.
Okay, so, could you see doing -- I don't know --
maybe barn lumber on the wall?
That would be kind of neat.
Hal just did an installation,
and he actually used metal.
HAL: Yeah, and so this would actually
incorporate the idea of a headboard,
but it would travel the whole distance of the room.
Maybe that's a starting point for that back wall.
I like that.
STU: That's cool.
And so, I'm not thinking red barn board.
Red is the color most commonly associated with barns.
It was the pigment most often used
because it was the most affordable.
The barn lumber that we're going to use is white,
and that was developed as they started doing dairy barns
because the white was synonymous with cleanliness.
I love that. My family had a farm for a long time.
They still do.
It would be really cool to incorporate that idea.
This is our pocket door that leads to our bathroom.
Yeah, it's awful. It's a very cheap door.
So, would you like to put a swinging door into it?
Like, the ones you put on tracks,
like, old, vintage, kind of --
I mean, you could take barn doors,
and you just put it on the track up above.
We actually have doors on our office over here
that are very similar,
and these are the original doors to the building.
HAL: See how the track system runs?
Oh, yeah, look at that.
And so that's a concept.
The metallic concept to that is so cool.
So in the pictures that you guys have brought --
Every picture you have, there's beams.
Right.
I love beams.
Okay.
It's a vaulted ceiling, so I feel like
we want to draw our eye up.
Okay, I'm gonna be the voice of reason,
'cause that's a bigger construction project.
That could be a $4,000 or $5,000
tearing out the drywall, putting the beams in.
You just don't know what you're getting into
until you get into it.
And I don't want to go over budget.
[ Horn honks ]
Gary and Sherri are here.
[ Horn honks ]
Wow, that is a big load.
They just pulled around the corner, boys.
Becky, hold down the fort.
Another nice load from Southern Iowa.
Hey, how you doing?
Good. How are you?
What have we got going today?
Those gates right there are actually hobo gates.
SHERRI: Hobo gates.
They came from a school in Southeast Iowa
that was right along the railroad tracks,
and they were to protect from
the hobos coming into the school.
You guys make up so much.
Isn't that a good one?
That is actually true.
[ Laughs ]
That is actually true.
So, what do you have a price on these?
Those right there are $65 apiece.
Take all three.
You know, the cast-iron welding,
where they're drilled and welded,
and they're not threaded, they probably are that age --
maybe turn of the century, a little later.
I would say, yes.
It makes a great story.
It's a good story, but I don't see it
being a piece of art in anybody's place.
I see it more as a coat rack.
[ Laughter ]
We're gonna think about that one.
Okay.
All right, then what are these?
SHERRI: Those are some marquee lights --
1903, porcelain.
There's another one up here, too.
We came across them. They were an awesome find, and we found them in a barn.
DON: Those are incredible.
The porcelain is a bright, vivid blue
with pristine white stenciling,
filigree on the top and the bottom.
They're stamped "1903." I had to have those.
Those would run $135 apiece. Take them both.
Anything that is a letter or a number
is very easy to sell.
I can get $250 out of each one of those
as soon as we wire them up.
If we mount them right, we could do "52"
on the top of your next birthday cake.
Oh, Hal, you're so funny. I'm not 52.
[ Laughs ]
Or "25."
25, there you go.
That's what I want to be.
Yeah, that's the age of the girls you like to chase.
[ Laughs ]
[ Scoffs ]
No, I think that these are great.
I think we get those mounted.
It's just a neat picture in itself,
and it's a one-of-a-kind piece.
$125?
Did I mention that the light bulbs went with them?
[ Laughter ]
I think we can do $125.
If you're willing to do that, I'm willing to do that.
And I'll throw in a cup of coffee.
I'll just take you up on that one right there.
Those are rare, and those are awesome.
SHERRI: You're gonna love this piece.
It would have came out of an old-time theater,
probably the turn of the century or before,
and there is some wonderful slides that go with it.
The projector that Gary had in the back of his truck
was like nothing I've ever seen.
"McIntosh, Chicago, Illinois." That's cool.
It's historic. It's Americana. I got to have it in the store.
Yeah, this has got to be a turn-of-the-century piece.
To me, this slides in here and projects out one,
and they probably had the two
so that you could shut that off, and then project the next one,
and so you weren't having -- Wow, that is crazy.
HAL: It's got great color.
It's only $325.
I know that some of these projectors
can go into the tens of thousands of dollars.
It's just one of those things
that's gonna take the right person,
'cause it's not gonna be anything but what it is.
It's unique enough that I think we probably do her.
Thank you. We appreciate it.
All right.
Sherri, thank you very much.
Let's go in and get settled up with some cash.
We might have to sit on this piece for years,
but when it sells, we're gonna make a great profit.
We have a project coming up for Stu and Lauren
where we're redoing their bedroom.
It's a vaulted ceiling, so I feel like,
you know, we want to draw our eye up.
Love beams.
HAL: See how the track system runs?
Oh, yeah. So cool.
DON: We've got the doors picked out, cut to size.
They're sanded down.
We're developing a tracking system
that's gonna fit into the space.
This is the wood track.
The other option is running it to the left.
HAL: Yep. Let's do it.
We've already started wood trim around the sides.
Where are we going, Hal?
The other thing that I think we should talk about
is the beams.
Okay.
This room is 186 inches across.
There is no way that I feel comfortable
building a beam that spans that length
that's not into the walls.
Okay, but we have to do beams because they like beams.
We don't have to, 'cause it's not in their budget yet.
But if we can, I think they'd like it.
Okay, all right.
That projector that we got off the truck at Gary and Sherri's,
could you make art out of the slides?
'Cause I don't know what we're gonna do with the slides.
They're so small.
And they'd have to be backlit.
Maybe something to kick around.
Yeah, and then the last thing I think we need to
figure out, too, are the nightstands.
I'm gonna vote for maybe going with those barrister bookcases.
You get a vote, and how many votes do I get?
Half. A half a vote.
Can I vote twice?
No.
HAL: The lawyer bookcases that I'm gonna be using
are from NASA, and so they do have a history of their own.
They came through here from a picker,
and we bought probably about 50 of them.
What I want to do is to pop this glass out.
Okay.
Okay?
If we have a piece of church glass from upstairs
in those broken panels that we got,
and then replace it and put it in here.
We can backlight this by drilling a hole back into here.
This then would shine, you know,
and create some interest and some depth next to the bed.
DON: I'm cool with that -- Even though
my vote is more important, it doesn't count.
All right, well, this is what I'm doing.
It's kind of like the Electoral College.
Come see the junk I have in my trunk.
DON: Junk in the trunk? Did you find some good stuff?
I think so.
I spoke with Don last night.
He had the idea of
picking something up from Stu's family farm.
I found a few things,
so I hope that he can repurpose them
and make them into something really great
for our master bedroom.
That's the base, probably, off a cream separator.
Okay.
The whole separator piece would sit on top of that
and separate the cream from the milk on a dairy farm.
That's probably a 100-year-old piece of metal.
I don't think that's correct.
What do you think it is?
I think that you would sit there,
and then you would tie my shoe.
Oh, yeah!
Oh, man, you wear a size 9 girls.
[ Laughter ]
This actually is cool. I like the shape of it.
I think we can do something amazing with it.
We'll get ahold of you in a couple of days.
Sounds great.
Cool.
[ Hammering ]
Brian!
Lauren just brought this in.
Louder.
Hey, I think this piece has potential
for the side table between the two chairs.
This is just gonna be a cool piece sitting in that room,
so that's what we've got to start.
This can be anything.
Done.
Awesome.
Knock her out, brother.
HAL: [ Laughing ] Where are you?!
Come on!
Oh, you mean now?
Yes, come on.
Oh, I don't want to do it.
So, yesterday, Don and I and Joe discussed this headboard
that we are going to re-create into a bench seat.
Yeah, well, as you see,
the headboard is still in the hallway
right where we left it.
Since Don didn't create the concept of the headboard,
it's not his idea.
And so, until he decides that he wants to make it his own
will anything happen with it.
DON: Go ahead and get the headboard.
I'll get it.
I got the heavy part.
All right, I'll get it,
but we're gonna take it downstairs.
We've got to get it sold, all right?
DON: Brian, Rex...
...Hal would like to make a bench --
Can't do it.
He'd like to make a bench out of this.
We're gonna cut it right down the center.
So, the center medallion --
we're gonna have to be really careful
not to break any chunks out of it.
Let's get this done in the next --
I don't know -- 2 1/2 weeks.
I'm booked up at least three weeks out.
HAL: Whatever.
I've got a client coming in.
I've got employment right now.
All right, thanks, guys.
Put her in the back room.
[ Laughter ]
I think it's gonna break.
Let's flip it over and cut it from the other side.
Are you ready for this? Is this gonna work?
I'm not cutting it.
It's your butt on the line.
[ Laughs ]
I'm just merely helping hold the saw.
[ Saw buzzing ]
[ Saw grinding ]
Oh, that's a good sound.
DON: Hey, Hal, you want to bring a box of slides over?
I got an idea.
Yep.
You know, that art wall
that you guys are struggling with?
Yeah.
I know you guys are trying to incorporate the slides.
What if we suspended them an inch or two off the face
with a light behind.
Is there a plug right below this?
Close.
Okay.
And this'll be a good size because I think we still have
at least six feet, maybe, to the corner.
I think it's cool.
So, once again, I'm happy to
take something else off your plate.
All right. Sounds good.
Thanks, Don.
You're welcome.
I'm finishing up the final touches
on Stu and Lauren's table.
I have all the tin plate tacked down.
Nice!
That's for Stu and Lauren? You almost done?
You want me to ring the bell for you?
[ Bell clanking ]
Sure.
[ Laughs ]
Nice. Ringing the bell.
And then I'll put some polyurethane on it
to seal everything in and all the colors will pop.
It's gonna look great in their room.
HAL: Rex has been working on the headboard
downstairs in the basement, created it into a bench,
and it looks fantastic.
This looks good.
No, I think just paint it, and then we'll do a cushion.
Yeah, I think you guys should listen to me some more.
I come up with some good ideas, don't I?
You do, but where'd you get that shirt?
[ Laughter ]
Joe has already created a color palette
that he's gonna be painting that.
It's gonna be kind of, like, a nice, mushroomy brown.
It'll be out of here before you know it.
JOE: Hey, Don? Don?
Yeah?
Kenny's here.
Kenny!
Kenny.
How are you, man?
Employee of the month, huh?
I haven't seen you for a long time.
It's been too long.
Well, let's run out and take a look.
Yeah, sure.
DON: What in the heck is that?
One of the unique things I brought down
was a dog-powered conveyer.
I think they would grind grain with it
or whatever they wanted to power,
but, yeah, put their animal on here,
hook the reins to here.
You walk your dog up on it.
And then as he goes on this treadmill,
it'll power a piece of equipment.
Yeah.
And as they would walk --
Ohh! Ouch!
Sorry, Hal.
Hey, Hal, don't put your finger in there.
I'm tough on designers. Sorry about that.
It's very unique. It's Americana.
It's a cool conversation piece.
I'm not really sure what to do with it.
Who's gonna put that in their home?
Yeah, we'll think about that one. What else did you bring?
Okay, I got the gable end.
What I really like is the gable end.
Yeah, I know.
KENNY: So in the 1890s,
people would order their houses right out of a catalog,
and they would ship them here on a train.
But to make them special and not like the neighbors,
they'd order a special gable end,
like this fancy one I brought down.
If you look at what we do now
with our routers and our drills and all the saws --
these guys were doing this by hand.
Yeah.
It probably was six months of work to make that.
DON: A gable end like that has probably been
kicking around in a barn for 30 years.
We're not tearing as many of the big, beautiful homes down,
so people are more sensitive to
getting rid of that type of piece.
$400 on that, Don.
You're thinking $400.
I'm probably gonna have to be in the $300,
partly because I think $400's a good retail price,
and I don't know that we're gonna get $500.
All right, $395, then.
Let's meet in the middle and do $305.
$30-- that's your middle, huh?
You know what -- I'd do $350.
$350. Yeah, we can do that.
All right.
All right.
You know, to me, that's a headboard.
There you go. Perfect. Hang it on the wall.
Above a fireplace mantel.
Exactly.
Thank you for coming down.
JOE: Thanks, Kenny.
Boys, get to work. Unload the truck.
Got enough room?
Yep.
HAL: Don and I are heading over to Stu and Lauren's house today,
and I just want to make sure everything is going as planned.
DON: What are you thinking if we can't do the beams?
Do you think that's something we have to have?
I do.
Okay.
Yep, they wanted them.
Conceptually, I agree,
but the reality of getting them done in their budget --
I'm like 92% sure we can't do it.
Excellent work, guys. This place looks awesome.
They're gonna love it.
It looks really good.
What we need to discuss now are the beams.
Show of hands -- yes? Yes for beams?
No for beams.
Hal loses!
Why can't we put a beam here and here?
If this is on the ceiling, that wheel can't go.
So we can't put a beam from here to there anyway
because it'll impede the roll of the wheel
because the wheels are so tight to the ceiling.
Okay, and why can't we put a beam from there to there?
'Cause then we have to poke holes in the drywall
and get up in the attic,
and can you actually get up in the attic?
Right there.
Right, but can you get up there and work?
If we did a short beam from, you know,
an 8-foot or 10-foot beam, we could get into the joist.
If I don't have them,
I lose a big aspect of what the whole design was.
So I've got to have them.
DON: When I left yesterday,
we had so much stuff to get done.
Got it?
DON: Yep.
Go slow, Rex. You're backing up.
When I get back today,
the guys have gotten almost all of it taken care of.
This does look great.
Wow.
There's still a few things to do.
I'm hoping we can get it done before Lauren and Stu come home.
I don't know why you bring pieces of things in
to decorate with that are the same profile that you have.
[ Laughs ] Yeah.
I feel like I'm starting to understand you.
A little bit? Should I karate-chop this?
I think so. But I think you need to do all three of them.
The karate chop is out.
Oh, it is?
Yeah, that was so '80s.
So if that karate-chop-'80s thing is out,
what about the jeans you're wearing?
[ Laughs ] Oh, my God.
[ Laughs ]
Hey!
STU: Oh, my goodness!
Wow!
What's up?
Hey, guys.
We were not expecting you.
What do you think?
Wow.
LAUREN: You're kidding me!
Is this our bedroom?
This is it.
I'm gonna pass out!
Yes, yeah.
Where are we?
Well, you got the beams in here.
We did. We made it happen.
Oh, my goodness. Look at that.
The focus is the industrial metal and the wood,
but behind the pillows we've incorporated a door
as a headboard that you haven't even seen yet.
What?
It's an old Victorian pocket door.
There are so many subtle things you haven't even noticed yet.
HAL: Stu's looking at the old barrister bookcases
that we had up on the third floor,
and so we took the clear glass out and put the stained glass in
to pick up the color palette in the room.
So you can turn off your chandelier if you want to,
and then just have these lit and the bed lights.
Isn't that cool?
STU: It's kind of like the chandelier
we used to have at my grandma's house.
DON: Lauren knew that.
Was this your idea?
No. [ Laughs ]
She made a trip to your grandparents' farm.
Surprise.
You didn't tell me that.
And she brought back a base
of a cream separator that they used.
No way! My grandma used to do her own cream.
She would tell me stories of that.
Really?
Yeah.
No, seriously, they know you took that?
Yes, we asked permission.
And we had Brian make the tin-topped table.
This was a copper boiler that we actually had
down in the basement that Brian cuts up and then creates the pattern.
The piece you didn't see that you were standing right next to...
Yeah.
...is a 10-panel wall art of the antique ceiling tin
that we get out of old buildings.
Okay.
Slides that we used came out of a 1910 projector.
What?!
What?! Oh, wow. Check that out.
Oh, my goodness.
So the next detail that I'd like to point out
are the rolling doors.
Uh-huh.
And if you look up above,
those are pocket-door hardware out of an 1880s home.
Those would have been in the wall
that rolled the pocket doors back and forth.
Who would have thought 100 and some years later
that we would rather see that on the outside of the door?
This piece I'm gonna have to explain a little bit.
The cabinet itself started out as a grain bin.
They were used in a barn to move the grain from stall to stall,
but we completely reworked it.
That is so awesome.
Oh, man, that's cool.
I love it.
HAL: Well, we came to West End to get a unique feel.
I mean, you won't find a room like this anywhere ever.
And we won't do another one like this.
I know.
Well, we're thrilled that you're thrilled.
We're beyond thrilled. "Thrilled" doesn't even --
I mean, it's really -- it's beyond.
That's a compliment.
I really appreciate it. That was awesome.
Aww. Hey, back off my wife.
Back off mine.
[ Laughs ]
[ Cellphone ringing ]
Hello? Joe? What do you want?
JOE: I just wanted to call to let you know
that I sold that Victorian bench for 950 bucks.
DON: No way!
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, that's crazy.
And, I mean, we knew it would sell right off the bat.
This goes to show, you know, that he needs to let us
take more control of what happens
down there in the basement.
Tomorrow, when I get to work,
we'll just go ahead and we'll decide
what else needs to be done, okay?
All right, sounds good, Hal.
All right, Joe. Well, thanks for calling.
Ah! I won!