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Rick Luebke, showroom manager for the Architectural Salvage of Greensboro, once had someone come in and tell him that he should be ashamed of himself.

The organization, an arm of Preservation Greensboro, strips old buildings, slated for demolition, of their floors, doors, sinks, columns and any other items volunteers can haul away in a 1956 Ford F-500 truck dubbed Bessie. The wares are then sold in the ASG's shop on Bellemeade Street. The woman who confronted Luebke was irate over what she perceived to be violations of historic properties.

"She said, 'Well, you're supposed to be saving these old houses, not tearing them down,' " Luebke recalled. "And I said, 'Wait a minute, we try. We try all the time to put ourselves out of business. But we can't save every house. ... What would you rather us do, stand there and watch the bulldozers come -- because they are coming -- with all

the hardwood floors, the claw-foot tubs, the pedestal sinks, everything still inside the house, and then have all that taken to the landfill?'

"And she said, 'Well I never thought of it that way.' So sometimes we have to educate people."

The ASG is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Volunteers say the nonprofit organization is the last link in the preservation chain, giving new life to articles that might otherwise end up in the trash heap. The store on Bellemeade, which is open Fridays and Saturdays, features a wide array of old windows, claw-foot tubs, chandeliers and even a few oddities, such as a Japanese pachinko machine.

"We were definitely green before green was cool," volunteer Rick Hollowell said. "That's been one of our themes all along -- let's not send it to the landfill. And if you need stuff for an old house, the only way to get it may be off of another old house."

Distressed treasures

The ASG is housed in a former Packard dealership. A 1949 newspaper ad for that dealership that was found in an old house hangs in the showroom. It features a brand new Packard Eight Club Sedan for $2,224. The upper floor, which was used as a maintenance shop, has warped floors and a concrete ramp leading up to it.

Racks in the back are filled with old doors and hard pinewood flooring, as well as pastel-colored sinks and toilets.

Rich Ellis, publisher of the Rocky Mount, Va.-based Architectural Salvage News, estimates there are about 25 nonprofit architectural salvage operations like ASG nationwide. Customers of such organizations tend to fit into one of two groups, he said -- those who are just looking for old parts to restore an old house, and those who live in higher-end homes who want to put in custom floors, antique lighting fixtures and vintage kitchen counters.

"People who buy architectural salvage have an appreciation for old building materials, the quality, the craftsmanship," Ellis said. "Because let's face it, anyone can go to a big-box building supplies store and buy a door or a faucet for less money. People are buying architectural antiques because of the history, the authenticity and the quality and craftsmanship that went into it."

Hollowell said customers will sometimes put their wares to creative uses. One high school student painted some doors and put them on display for an art project. He has pictures of doors that people have turned into headboards for their beds. A common use for old window frames is either painting pictures on the glass panes or putting photographs in them.

But most people still want to keep that old look, even after repurposing the items.

"Usually folks like to have the distressed paint as it is," Hollowell said. "On some that I have, I've actually left the window frames outside for a year, so that the paint would peel. I then put polyurethane over it, because I didn't want any more paint to come off, especially in the house, and it makes a nice old feature."

SWAT team

Jon Enos walks into the dilapidated house wearing shorts, work boots and a headband, armed with a crowbar and hammer.

From the outside, the two-story home with its large balcony, French doors and view of the Greensboro Country Club looks like it might once have belonged to Southern aristocracy. But firefighters, who have been using the property for training, have pretty much wrecked the inside. The drywall has been ripped apart, wires hang from the ceilings, the kitchen and bathrooms have been gutted.

Enos walks up to one of the French doors, pops the bolts out of the hinges with his crowbar and carries it out to his truck.

"You get a good workout," he says. "Spending the weekend using your muscles."

The 57-year-old Enos is part of ASG's SWAT (Salvaging Worn Architectural Treasures) team. When an old house is about to come down, they're the ones who take out all the floors, sinks and other fixtures.

"We usually like to get some lead time," Luebke said. "But sometimes I'll come in like on a Wednesday, check the messages and there will be someone saying, 'We have a house that's going to be bulldozed Monday.' And so we have to scramble to get a team together for Saturday. And usually we have anywhere from four to 15 people show up -- from doctors and accountants to engineers and some contractor type folks."

Anyone wanting to volunteer can show up either Friday or Saturday, when the showroom is open, or during work sessions, which take place on the Tuesday before the first and third Saturdays of the month.

Locations of work sites are kept secret until the day the SWAT team heads out, to deter any potential looters. But volunteers get first dibs on buying whatever they salvage from a building, and every work hour they put in earns them $5 worth of credit at the ASG store.

When the SWAT team goes out on a salvage, they usually try to target certain items.

"Usually our time is limited, so we have to prioritize what we're going to go for. Flooring is one of those items that we have a high demand for," said Hollowell, a 51-year-old telecommunications consultant. "There's also a demand for the older type glass that has a wavy pattern. And there are numerous types of unique sinks we've taken out and certainly a lot of unique lighting fixtures.

One of the most difficult salvages involved taking a chandelier out of the old Jefferson Club. It hung from a 20-foot ceiling in the ballroom and no one had any ladders to be able to reach, so volunteers went up on the roof with an ax.

"They chopped a hole, put someone on the rafters and carefully broke the plaster from around it," Luebke said." They tied ropes on the spokes and lowered it to the ground."

"I was at the receiving end of that chandelier," Hollowell said. "It was a nervous day."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com