When you want to use secondhand materials for a storefront build-out.

Building out a store, when your business is all about reuse and upcycling can be tricky, because there aren’t always options, especially if you have a big space and a small budget. I went to ReStore to look for baseboards, and they didn’t have enough of the same material for all of RETHINK. Just when we had given up on having upcycled baseboards, I mentioned to the lady who was helping me “you know, I’m cool with doing something weird too…where’s your flooring?”

We wandered over, and found pieces with potential, but still nothing quite right. Then we found the hardwood tongue and groove flooring in another area. It was 3/4″ thick, and 5″ tall, and it was $10 a box? Sold!! I knew I could make it work! I left with 2 boxes.

The color almost worked as is, but I knew it would be better with a gray or black stain. I picked up a dark gray stain at Home Depot, and sanded the fronts if these boards and did my sample. The original stain was not sanding evenly, and to be honest, they looked awful. After 6 unsuccessful samples, my husband and I both separately came to the conclusion that we should flip the board backwards, and stain the wrong side. There were stripes on the backside of the boards that absorbed the stain in a cool way.

So we stained the rest and put on a coat of poly, and there you have it! I feel like this project really embodies what RETHINK does. Sometimes you just need to throw the rules out the window!