If you live in North Portland you now have your own vintage house parts business. Salvage Works is located in the historic North Portland Kenton neighborhood, and offers a wide array of reclaimed vintage architectural salvaged house parts. Salvage Works also offers handmade custom furniture and collectables and hosts shows by local furniture makers and artists as part of Kenton’s Third Thursday Art Walk.

Owned by finish carpenter and furniture maker Preston Browning. Browning moved to Portland in 1993, “I worked in a cabinet shop, and soon after that I turned to making my own furniture, honing my skills as a finish carpenter restoring old Portland homes.”

Browning started working for the ReBuilding Center in 1999 on their first deconstruction crew. “I soon moved on to develop ReFind Furniture, a department of the ReBuilding Center which makes furniture and accessories from reclaimed lumber and house parts. Around the same time, my wife and I bought and restored our first house, a Victorian in Northeast Portland. We have since restored three more houses.”

In 2004, Browning moved to New Orleans so his wife could attend graduate school. “We restored an 1888 shotgun house there. After hurricane Katrina, I worked with Mercy Corps in the neighborhoods of New Orleans, training nonprofits and contractors in the practices of deconstruction. Since returning to Portland in 2007, I have worked for the City of Portland in the Green Building Program and with Lovett Deconstruction and have been building furniture and custom store fixtures until opening Salvage Works.”

We asked, what drove you to open a salvage store? “Salvage Works is the culmination of years of work diverting beautiful, useful, and irreplaceable materials from the landfill. It also satisfies my life-long addiction to collecting, thrifting, and junking for cool, funky, and weird old stuff.”

House Parts

House parts that are in stock most of the time are rough cut lumber, old growth clear vertical grain (CVG) Doug fir, standard framing lumber, flooring, siding, molding, windows, architectural features, mantels, columns, vintage hardware, and lighting. Salvage Works also has vintage interior doors in single, four, and five panels plus exterior doors and French doors. Kitchen and bath fixtures, including claw foot tubs and collectables for home and gardens are available most of the time.

Other products offered are custom chicken coop kits and beehives (seasonal). Chicken coops kits are easy to assemble and are made from recycled lumber.

Shop Services Offered

Salvage Works also offers services to restore or repair customer-owned items in their wood shop.
Home owners will need to bring these items into the stop for repair there is no pick up. Some of the house parts services are: repair and modification of doors, window repair and re-glazing with period glass, lumber re-milling (no painted wood), and hardware cleaning. Browning, who has over 15 years of experience in antique restoration and repair, offers this service to his customers as well.

Browning will create store and restaurant fixtures, countertops, stair treads, shelving, or whatever you need out of reclaimed lumber. Browning in addition will buy old lumber, flooring, siding, fixtures, lighting, hardware, doors, and windows.

Salvage Works is located at 2030 N Wills Blvd., and is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm. Call 503-285-2555 or visit www.salvageworkspdx.com.