Come Shopping with Us - a Trip to our Favorite Seattle Salvage Shops and Countertop Spot

THE POPLAR COTTAGE

In September, Garrett and I drove to Seattle for a big shopping trip for finishes for the Poplar Cottage. We wanted to find countertops and hardwood flooring in order to move the Poplar Cottage design and construction forward (you know, the things that are hard to buy online!). Want to see what we found? Today we’re brining you along on our shopping trip and sharing the goods we found at our favorite Seattle salvage stores.

Seattle is about 2 hours away from our small town, so we try to plan ahead, waiting until we have a big list so we can maximize the trek over the mountains. This time our list included countertops, flooring to patch in the existing floors, a bathtub, a 4’-wide French door (spoiler: we didn’t find it), and anything else that caught our eye.

Our favorite Seattle Stores

GS Cabinets - we’ve used GS cabinets for all of our stone countertops since we started remodeling. They can do the install in Seattle, but don’t travel over the mountains to our small town. Thankfully Garrett taught himself to fabricate and install countertops so we just buy the material from them (their countertops come in counter-depth 8’ and 9’ sections and usually an island width and a 4” backsplash). GS also has all-wood and plywood cabinets that we’ve used in the past and would again, but Garrett’s planning to build the cabinets this go-around.

Second Use (Salvage Shop) - We’ve bought all sorts of things from Second Use including windows, beams, tubs, and doors. They have a giant warehouse and yard in SODO with a revolving inventory so it’s great to come with a list but spend some time checking out all their wares.

Earthwise (Salvage Shop) - Earthwise has a great selection of sinks, flooring, and doors. They also tend to have unique architectural finds so I like to wander around the store and see what they have.

I also wanted to include a couple of stores we didn’t make it to this shopping trip, but are some of our favorites…

Rejuvenation - this is my go-to source for hardware, lighting, rugs, and all sorts of home goods. Their SODO store is beautiful and worth a visit, but thankfully they have a great online shop too. We ordered the Poplar Cottage’s kitchen lighting and hardware from here.

Ballard Reuse (Salvage Shop) - we didn’t make it to ReUse this time around, but have purchased so much from here in the past. It’s definitely worth a visit (and bonus: it’s close to all of the Ballard breweries!).

What we bought

Countertops

I love using natural materials for countertops like marble, wood, and granite. But GS Building Supply, our go-to countertop shop, stopped carrying the marble we love (the marble we used at the Porch House and Farmhouse kitchens), so I had to go a little out of my comfort zone. I considered black granite (we used it in the Tacoma Converted Garage kitchen), but felt like it was too heavy for this small kitchen. One of the quartzite caught my eye, but it had too much variation between slabs. So I settled on a light-colored quartz with large veining and I’m excited to try it. Garrett’s also excited because it’s easier to cut than marble. BTW it was the most expensive slab there at $455 for a 9’ countertop length.

Oak flooring

The kitchen’s oak floors have a few spots that need patching and we decided to extend those floors into the bathroom. So we were looking for ~40sf of oak floors. We brought a small sample of our existing floors with us and found an almost exact match at the salvage store. The flooring was sold per the bundle and came out to a few dollars a square foot.

Fir flooring

It was a fun surprise to find a ton of freshly-milled fir flooring at Second Use. We bought enough to patch in the new doorway between the living room and bedroom and patch in the master closet at our Farmhouse.

Bathtub

I like to use cast iron tubs in our projects, but they can be super expensive when buying new. I proposed a claw foot tub to Garrett but he said no (they’re hard to plumb and give him fits, he said) so we planned to buy Home Depot’s least expensive, simple cast iron tub, the Kohler Villager. So when I found the exact model at the Second Use for $75, we jumped on it.