Recycling at the ReStore

Jack Stephens knows how handy something used can be for making something new. 

He works at Habitat for Humanity of Flathead Valley’s new and improved ReStore outlet. He’s also been one of its biggest customers, buying donated building materials, furniture, appliances and household items on the cheap to help build his dreams.

“Go to ReStore first,” is Stephens’ advice for people with building projects. “You might find just what you’re looking for. Or you might find something you like even better.”

ReStore has reopened at a new location on U.S. 93 in south Kalispell. It has 12,000 square feet of floor space, a separate building center and an outdoor yard to stock and resell the donations that come in. A grant helped buy a truck and forklift.

The new location is about three times the size of the old location. 

And the potential for all the different things that come through the door on any given day becomes evident as Stephens walks through the old LaSalle Grange on U.S. 2 south of Columbia Falls.

A lover of art and music with lots of energy and imagination and a knack for building projects, Stephens bought the Grange hall about a year ago.

It’s a place where farmers once met to talk crops and host events. Stephens envisions the rustic building reopened as a place for “gaslight theater” plays, concerts and dances, songwriter and comedy nights, writer readings, art exhibits and movie and radio shows. 

“Any good clean fun,” he said.

The building remains a work in progress, but ReStore helped Stephens get this far. 

It came through with doors and windows, chandeliers, chairs, lumber, paneling, vintage appliances for the kitchen and art deco light fixtures for the bathrooms. 

Stephens bought four donated cans of stain, mixed them all together and found a perfect look for the beat-up concrete floor downstairs. He got a deal on a set of used JBL speakers and stage lights. 

Some neat old doorknobs sitting on the front counter await installation. So does a service bell.

“I couldn’t have done any of this without ReStore,” Stephens said. 

Just about everything that’s gone into fixing up the Grange hall was either there when Stephens started or found among the donated items at ReStore.

The same goes for an underground recording studio Stephens is building at his home up the road. 

He got a used water heater, an old pellet stove, a claw-foot tub, a sink and a toilet for the bathroom, as well as half the paint and insulation. An old sliding door gave up its glass for a recording room window. Donated lumber built bookshelves and a desk for the mixing and computer equipment. Salvaged hardwood flooring looks great underfoot after some clean up work.

“People can get this stuff for pennies on the dollar,” Stephens said. And that’s as true for someone building a simple chicken coop or greenhouse as it is for someone like himself building their dream music studio and performance hall, he said.

BECAUSE OF STRONG community support, the old ReStore location in Kalispell simply ran out of room. 

This new location gives the operation a good place to grow along a busy highway. It celebrates a grand opening with a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Christine Morris, director of Habitat for Humanity of Flathead Valley, said.

Donations to ReStore are tax-deductible. 

It sells a wide array of deeply-discounted building materials, appliances, furniture and household items. That lowers the cost of home improvement projects, keeps perfectly usable items out of the county landfill and raises money to help pay for the affordable houses Habitat and its volunteers build each year in the Flathead Valley.

“Basically we were netting $100,000 a year off the old store, enough to build one home. We’re looking to double that over the next three years. So ReStore could support construction of two homes a year,” Morris said.

“We were just popping at the seams in the old store. We’ve had such wide support from the community and received wonderful donations. We had a lot of stuff in storage and couldn’t put it all on the floor. We finally decided we need to expand because it looked like the community would support it.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.