Upcycling is the process of turning unwanted materials or useless products into a quality new product with the added benefit of keeping what was once trash out of a landfill. It’s an evolution of recycling, which generally breaks down unwanted materials and turns them into similar new materials. On the other hand, upcycling also lends itself to creating something more valuable than the original material or, at least, more unique.
Salvaged Beauty – John Deere, Homestead Magazine
California’s two-lane Highway 99 beams north from Sacramento connecting a string of farm towns between the fertile Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills.
This is where orchards of walnuts, olives, and kiwis grow, and where grass runs feathery green in the spring. Leave the highway heading east, and you’ll see the ground buckle skyward in a tableau of flat-topped hills called buttes. Between them, water gleams in ponds fed by mountain streams.
Ninety miles from Sacramento is the town of Chico–86,000 residents strong and home to a state university, the Sierra Nevada Brewery, and the National Yo-Yo Museum. Soth of town, Durham-Pentz Road ribbons eastward into Butte Valley. Turn left on an old ranch road, cross a creek and you come to Tim Leefeldt’s place, a two story home…
Written by Laura Read
Railroadware: Light Fixtures from Upcycling Track – San Francisco Chronicle
Upcycling has such a hold on the decor world these days that we wonder if there’s anything that can’t be re-envisioned as a home accessory.
In Chico, for example, architect Tim Leefeldt has turned a fixation on relics of western expansion and the early telecommunications industry into a second career creating decorative fixtures.
Glass insulators, railroad castoffs and old traffic light lenses are transformed into colorful pendant lights, candle holders, rustic hooks, cabinet pulls and racks for his Railroadware line.
Once ubiquitous, glass insulators were originally designed in the 1850s to protect wires on telegraph lines, and later on telephone and power lines. Leefeldt, 52, used them as target practice during his summers in Nevada in the late 1970s, but it wasn’t until he came across a Hemingray glass insulator at an Oroville antiques store four years ago that inspiration struck.
“I wanted to explore its use as a light,” he says. But it took a lot of drilling to make it work. He had to try different drill bits to find one that would penetrate the thick glass without shattering it…
Inventor Sees the Light in Insulators – Enterprise Record
Adaptive re-use. Re-assigning. Re-purposing.
These might be just fancy buzzwords that elevate recycling to new levels, but to Chico resident Tim Leefeldt, they’re much more than that.
To re-purpose is to take something that once had a specific purpose and then tweak it to give it new life,and it’s a job that Leefeldt knows all about…
Chico Architect Turns Old railroad Hardware Into Home Décor – Sacramento Bee
In a recycled world, everything old can be new again. Castoffs can take on entirely different shapes and styles, serve totally new purposes. But sometimes, the second time around can bring past charms into the home.
Railroad spikes as towel holders? Traffic lights as chip ‘n’ dip platters? All it takes is imagination and, yes, the right set of tools…
Sustainable Art & Architecture Exhibit at Butte College
RailroadWare Exhibit at Butte College
RailroadWare is made with reclaimed repurposed railroad hardend steel parts, glass insulators, traffic light lenses and other industrial objects. These very abundant rail anchors and railroad spikes are then transformed into new useful hardware and decorative home furnishings. They will be on display at the Sustainable Art & Architecture Exhibit at Butte Community College from November 1st to the 21st.