Enterprising Local Businessman Making a Living Reselling Old Housing Materials
COLUMBUS – The Dispatch
Columbus native Jacob Parnell has be running a successful business for the past three years that purchases unwanted, reclaimed constructions materials from older demolished houses and resells them to interested buyers. Things such as timbers from as little as a century ago, bricks, and other handcrafted bits and pieces, etc., have all proven very popular: “I’ve got stuff spread around all over the place,” he said.
Parnell went on to say that he hopes to move to a larger warehouse facility in a year or so.
Jacob Parnell of Mississippi Reclaimed (courtesy photo)
Others have also followed in his footsteps, albeit on a smaller scale. Kathy Arinder, director of the Columbus-Lowndes Habitat for Humanity, did so earlier this year. The owner of a large 1880’s-era house on 7th Street donated it to Habitat; Arinder and the Habitat board decided to salvage the house and resell the usable materials at their Gardner Ave location; it took about three months to complete the salvage operation.
Arinder said the store had sold the last of the material earlier this month: “I knew this stuff would be popular,” she said. “But I had no idea how popular it really was. It just flew out of our store.”
Pannell was one of the major buyers from this reclamation: “I bought quite a lot of their stuff,” he said.
He explained how he got started: “My mom had an old brick building that was falling apart,” Pannell said. “I knew that the bricks could be resold. So I tore the building down, salvaged what I could.”
He went on to explain that getting materials isn’t all that hard in the area, but that transporting them is very expensive. As a result, he has switched from an all-in-one service (demolition, hauling off, etc) to one where he simply buys and resells the materials.
His website can be found at mississippireclaimed.com.
For the full article, click here