People who have scraped together every penny to accumulate a down payment for a house will recognize the predicament that Jodi Murphy found herself in seven years ago.
“We had a starter home in Riverside, with two young children, zero moolah and orange sculptured carpet,” recalled Murphy, now a resident of LaGrange Park. “All our money was tied up in the house and diapers.”
As her family, which now includes a third child, grew, the diaper issue solved itself. But time did not diminish Murphy’s other problem–the desire to replace that ugly, orange carpeting and make other improvements to her newly purchased bungalow without breaking into a bank.
The planned demolition of a friend’s older home in Hinsdale led Murphy to find the carpet of her dreams–a thick pile, mauve carpeting that she estimated would cost $75 a yard in a store. Before the house came down, Murphy paid $200 for the entire carpet and laid it in her own living room. She also came away with the idea for an innovative business targeted at homeowners who have more energy than money.
“I thought, `Wow, I’m not the only struggling homeowner out there,’ ” said Murphy. Her idea was to auction items worth salvaging from older homes before the wrecking ball tears into them.
The company she founded, Murco Recycling Enterprises in LaGrange Park, conducts 40 to 50 home-demolition sales a year. Before a house is torn down, Murphy catalogs anything worth saving, from hardwood floors to mantles to light fixtures and landscaping.
“We’re trying to make money for the homeowner (who is demolishing a house),” Murphy explained. “We disperse the house in pieces to anyone who can use the pieces to improve their own homes.”
Homeowners whose houses are being demolished get a percentage of the proceeds of the auction.
Before her first auction was held, Murphy placed an ad announcing it in local newspapers. Now word-of-mouth has spread the news of her auctions to a customer base, which totals about 550. Fittingly, she calls these customers “home wreckers.” They pay from $15 to $25 a year to be informed of sales. Although most of her customers are homeowners, some are tradespeople, such as carpenters.
Murphy’s home wreckers complete a form listing items they are seeking for their homes. Compiled in a database, Murphy uses customers’ wish lists when she is determining if a home has enough salable items to merit an auction.
All customers receive fliers announcing upcoming auctions. For example, a recent flier noted the time, place and directions to an auction at a home in Glen Ellyn. It also detailed the items to be sold, starting with champagne-colored, 42-inch-high kitchen cabinets including a built-in pantry.
Oak flooring, exterior painted shutters, molding, a double garage door, a brass chandelier, a brick retaining wall and walkway, white Kohler toilets, a Kenmore refrigerator and a Tappan dishwasher also were on the auction block.
Customers who pay the higher $25 annual fee also receive notification of last-minute auctions or of high-end or specialized auctions. These are customers who have told Murphy, “All I need is a furnace (for example), find it for me.”
Murphy will attempt to match the items these customers need with items that are for auction.
“Say, a house is substandard, but there is a furnace that is in great condition,” Murphy said. “I’ll call those customers (who pay $25), who need a furnace and let them know about it.”
The demolition sales begin and end in one day. They start at 8:30 a.m. with a half-hour preview of items for sale. Home wreckers scatter through the home, stopping to examine anything they are interested in purchasing.
“Everybody has the chance to mill around, to see what’s what and make an informed purchase,” Murphy said.
Customers are encouraged to carry tape measures to quickly assess if the oak mantle or solid wood door they are eyeing would fit into their own home. They also must bring tools because the items they purchasye must be removed by day’s end.
The bidding begins at 9 a.m. Starting at the home’s front door, Murphy walks briskly through the home. She is followed by a clique of customers who bid for anything and everything, including the kitchen sink.
These are people with big dreams, but bare-bones budgets. Thrilled by the hunt for a bargain, home wreckers are likely to engage in a volley of friendly negotiation to get the best deal possible. Interspersed with the bidding, they also tend to resort to other methods of persuasion, including begging and cajoling to keep prices low.
“We respect that people are looking for a bargain,” Murphy said. “It has to be cheap enough so that it’s worth their time (to remove it). The people we cater to have a lot more energy than cash.”
One of those people is David Cirone. He and his wife, Christine, recently completed construction of a five-level colonial home in Des Plaines. It was a dream house that they planned even as they accumulated the items that they knew they would need for it. Those items were purchased at Murco auctions.
“I took about a year to gather the stuff and then I built my house around it,” David Cirone said.
He added, “we bought a water boiler, all our windows, 3,000 square feet of oak flooring, a staircase and railing, toilets and vanities and door trim. We’ve saved a ton of money. Just the front window alone was about $5,000 at (a home-improvement store). We got it for $500.”
Salvaging items from old homes allowed Cirone, who is an accountant, to build a new home that has the charm of a house built decades ago.
“I wanted to keep the character of the neighborhood,” he said. “My house is new, but it looks like it’s been there for 100 years.”
For projects that he did not have the expertise to do himself, such as the installation of a boiler, Cirone hired a contractor. His most recent purchase was of wooden base molding from a home in Hinsdale. As he pried the molding from the living room wall, Cirone stopped to help a man who had purchased the dining-room floor. Together, they began pulling up planks of the oak floor.
“This is a handyman’s dream,” said William Cannon, of Harvey, as he worked. He added that he was not intimidated by the task of removing and hauling away the flooring in one day.
“If you like doing things yourself, it’s not work,” he said. He plans to cut the flooring down and install it in his family room.
Such camaraderie among home wreckers is not unusual, said Murphy.
“People help each other out. It’s a learning experience,” she said.
At the same auction attended by Cirone and Cannon, Ann Foppe, of Elmhurst, purchased a mahogany staircase for $400. She and her husband, Terry, “like old stuff,” she said. “It’s cool. And we like recycling.”
Mark Loughmiller, recycling coordinator for the Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, praised Murco for recycling items that might otherwise end up clogging landfills.
“They’re a unique company in the Chicago area. What they’re doing is useful,” he said. “They’re putting recovered home materials back into commerce. That reduces what goes to the landfills. We (as a society) throw away too many good things.”
Besides realizing a profit from homes that are slated to be wrecked, Murphy said homeowners like seeing old items reused and appreciated by someone else.
“It’s a comfort to them (the homeowners) that they are not being wasteful,” Murphy said.
Often, home wreckers are people who enjoy doing things on their own, rather than hiring someone else to do it for them.
For her own home, Murphy said she has purchased such items as an oak mantle with a beveled glass mirror and pedestal sinks. She said home wreckers enjoy telling people how they located lovely, decades-old pieces and still saved money.
How these pieces were salvaged and where they came from becomes part of the lore of a home wrecker’s home.
“Every piece has a story. When it’s integrated into a new home, it becomes part of that history,” Murphy said.
