Salvage Showdown (2024 Look Back)

This article was originally published in this years Sidetracked Workshop Lookbook. It's about the summer of 2024 "Salvage Showdown" furniture build off! I thought now would be a good time to look back because the Sidetracked Workshop crew is currently working on our 2025 Salvage Showdown builds! Stay tuned to our social media for those 2025 updates! 

Salvage Showdown:

In the summer of 2024 Peter and Leo (at the time the only other Sidetracked Workshop crew member) participated in the Rebuilding Center’s Salvage Showdown. A Portland furniture build off and fundraiser:

From the Rebuilding Center’s website:

 “It is a competition. It is an event. And, yes, a fundraiser, too! 

A celebration of all things ReBuilding Center, our annual Salvage Showdown gathers 20 local makers, builders, and creatives that love this place, and challenges them to build something amazing with $100 worth of materials from our store and one month to do it. It culminates in a night of live music, food, and drinks where the builds are displayed, and raffled off to community members!

The Salvage Showdown helps support the ReBuilding Center empower homeowners with access to affordable home repair materials and classes, all while keeping usable materials out of the landfill.”

The Standoff:

The original plan was to enter the competition as a team; Sidetracked Workshop, a united front! But Leo got cocky, as he was tired of building Peter’s designs and “doing all the hard work,” while Peter “responded to emails all day”. So the grudge match began. Within the 20 contestant competition, there was only one battle that really mattered, Peter vs. Leo. Any larger competition success would simply be a cherry on top. Leo was determined to spread his wings and graduate from being just the “shop assistant” and Peter simply needed to protect his fragile ego.

So the competition began. Here are the ground rules to the Rebuilding Center’s Salvage Showdown 2024:

If you have ever seen the cooking competition TV show “Chopped”, it's a lot like that. The contestants get one evening to run around the Rebuilding Center (a salvaged/reclaimed material center) with a budget of $100.00 dollars to load up a cart of materials. They then take the materials home and get one month to build a furniture piece.

A couple of key points:

1. Each contestant is pre-assigned a category (Outdoor, living room, dining room, or bedroom).

2. Pieces must be functional, and there is a minimum size requirement - so they need to be full size pieces of furniture and can’t just be completely sculptural.

3. The pieces must use 3 different types of materials, so even if they are mostly wood, they cannot be only wood (or metal, etc,)

4. The event is a fundraiser, so all of the pieces are raffled off at the end of the competition. The winner of each category and the grand prize, or “Scrappy Award” winner, are determined by the number of raffle tickets each piece sells. This reflects both the desirability and quality of the furniture piece, it also reflects the builder’s ability to fundraise.

   1. In this case the ‘winner’ between Peter & Leo would be determined by who’s piece sold the most raffle tickets

The Builds Begin

With that they were off. They picked up their supplies on July 20th, 2024 and had 30 days to get it done!

Peter: Dining Room

Peter, a frequent Rebuilding Center shopper and 2023 competition veteran, had keyed in on some beautiful reclaimed fir floor boards as his main build medium, grabbed a beautiful large piece of glass which would ultimately inspire his final design, several hinges, handles, and doorknobs, and more random pieces of wood.

Inspired by the materials, and a 2023 trip to Japan, he sketched out a Stepped Tansu (chest of drawers and doors) with a reclaimed material twist. He figured it could be a formal sideboard style piece in a dining room (or that's how he shoehorned it into the category – really he just wanted to try and build one).

Leo: Living Room

This was Leo’s first time in the Rebuilding Center’s cavernous warehouse, and he fumbled through the material gathering as he explored all of his options and attempted to calculate how much material he would need for a furniture piece that was only a vague idea in his mind. Ultimately, he came away with a nice haul of reclaimed old growth lumber, some glass, a selection of hardware, and a curtain rod which would become the key element of his design.

He settled on a cabinet design centered around a set of triangular drawers that would rotate out around the curtain rod. It was an ambitious design, because not only would he need to build a large furniture piece, but he would have to figure out the drawer engineering, another layer of complexity. 

Starting the Builds:

One month may sound like plenty of time for the competition, but making a prize worthy, original piece of furniture requires design, prototyping, milling and processing of reclaimed materials, engineering, building, problem solving, attention to detail, developing new build processes and templates, cutting, sanding, finishing, and much more.

Peter estimated his piece would take around 40 hours. The competition rookie, Leo, had a complex build ahead of him and no idea how to estimate the time required. It ultimately took him at least 50 hours.

This competition took place during a busy month for Sidetracked Workshop; it was a side project, even if it was company sanctioned. Peter and Leo tried to be as efficient as possible building and shipping their vinyl cabinet orders, so they could eke out a half day on Friday to work on their furniture. Suffice to say, they each worked on the projects in their “spare time.” Meaning, they spent a lot of evenings and weekends side by side at the shop in earnest competition.

Phase one for both of them was to turn the pile of salvaged goods and lumber in front of them into usable material. Not a simple task.

Peter planed and cut down his floorboards into more workable and clean material, and then glued them up using their existing tongue and groove joint into large wood panels that he could then cut down into parts for his Tansu. He made the choice not to mill the boards further, though they would have been easier to work with. It was important to him that the floorboards show their history, character and story, that the piece retain its character. “I wanted people to see the beauty of these old floorboards; I wanted people to see that they were floorboards,” Peter said.

Leo was working with bulkier old growth dimensional lumber that he also had to mill down into more usable lumber. The larger pieces need a little more love than Peter’s more slender floorboards, but after the boards were milled they were a bit easier to work with than the fickle floorboards. Leo glued his pieces into workable panels as well, and the old lumber was quite stunning.

Sidetracked Sidenote: Old buildings were built with much higher quality lumber than is used in modern construction. There is a darker history here that they were logging beautiful old trees, instead of the way we farm construction lumber now. As a result this older wood itself is beautiful, workable, and tight grained.

Progress:

Let’s just say it moved in fits and spurts. Peter’s main casework eventually came together, and the piece took its shape. He then focused upon the central large door with the glass circle inlay. Over the frosted glass he inlaid a wood detail he referenced from a window he had been inspired by and took a picture of in Japan. Leo took some time to figure out the engineering behind his curtain rod rotating triangular drawers. Miraculously, the design worked out better than anticipated and the drawers spun on the two tubes of the curtain rod perfectly. He breezed through that project into cutting and assembling his main case.

The Final Days:

As the month drew to a close, Peter put in a long day getting all of his drawers and doors made and functioning, before working on a gentle arching base. He circled back the next day to sand and apply finish to the piece before making the deadline dropoff at the Rebuilding Center. Ultimately he was very happy with the finished look of the design. “Sometimes you have an idea in your head that turns out lackluster in the end,” he said, but this finished piece he was stoked on.

Leo managed to assemble his piece, get the drawer mechanism installed, and figure out a neat inset glass cubby in the top of his cabinet. This was Leo’s first foray into a furniture build with reclaimed materials. “I learned the hard way that they never quite cooperate, everything takes longer and is slightly more frustrating than expected,” he said, but he persisted! He worked until 2:00am the night before he dropped the piece off at the Rebuilding Center. The hard work paid off, and the complexity of the drawer system drew the desired ‘Ooos’ and ‘Ahhs’ as people fiddled with the rotating drawer set when it arrived on display. He was exhausted but rightfully satisfied with the stunning piece he produced.

The Finale! 

The pieces were on display for the next month inside the Rebuilding Center where shoppers and onlookers could admire the pieces and buy raffle tickets. Additionally tickets could be purchased online. To drum up some press they created a 7 part Instagram video series on their page @sidetrackedworkshop, documenting the whole process! (If this article is interesting to you, see it all come alive in front of your eyes on Instagram).

The competition culminated with an awesome event hosted at the Rebuilding Center. Food, live music, and friends! Thanks to everyone who came out! The night would culminate with the competition winners announced and the raffle winners posted to see which lucky folks would. Of course Peter and Leo hoped to succeed in the general competition, but the highest stakes were between the two of them.

On September 19th, 2024, the competitors and friends and other supporters gathered at the Rebuilding Center for food, live music and the crowning of the winners. Of course Peter and Leo hoped to succeed in the general competition, but the highest stakes were between the two of them.

And the Winner Is..

When it was time to announce the winners, the crowd gathered, personal friends in tight clusters around the anxious competitors. The Dining Room category was announced first: and the winner was PETER! Cheers from the crowd. Peter looked at Leo with a “beat that” look as he collected his prize.

Then the Living Room category came around. You guessed it: Leo won. A stoked Leo flipped Peter off and collected his prize.

The time came for the Scrappy Award announcement. Remember, this is the grand winner, the piece that sold the most raffle tickets. Peter and Leo took note of the two other category winners and their pieces, a gorgeous desk and an elegant outdoor bench. Tough competition.

The tension was rising. “And the winner is,” the announcer said, slowly opening the envelope “Peter!”

Peter and Leo, both winners. A relief as they needed to continue to work side by side at Sidetracked Workshop. Peter was proud to win the Scrappy Award, but just as proud of Leo, who had proved himself a formidable competitor.

If you ever stop by the southeast Portland Workshop, Peter will let you hold the trophy if you ask nicely. Leo has to walk by it everyday.

 A huge thank you to the Rebuilding Center for hosting such a great event! $44,000  was raised in total!  Find out more at rebuildingcenter.org, @rebuildingcenter on Instagram, or check the store out in person if you are local to Portland, OR.