Garage workshop filled castoffs to restore
TUPELO, Miss. (AP) — Sometimes, Josh Kidd will look at his cellphone and see that someone has texted him a random street address.
No other message. Just the address.
"And I know what that means," said Kidd, the youth minister at Lee Acres Church of Christ. "It means there's something cool on the side of the road I need to go pick up."
Kidd has furnished much of the Tupelo home he shares with his wife, Amber, and kids, Jackson and Lily, with castoffs he has rescued and repurposed.
A part from a rear projection television set became a decorative mirror. Old shelving found on the side of Country Club Road now frames pictures of his children. A broken baby bed was turned into an end table.
"It's all out of necessity," said Kidd, 36. "Who these days can afford to go out and buy new furniture? You know the way kids treat furniture. They could destroy everything in our house and we'd be out 15 bucks."
Kidd, who moved to Tupelo in June 2011, got some of his creative skills from his grandfathers. The rest he chalks up to technology.
"By watching YouTube videos, I taught myself how to solder," he said. "I couldn't afford to call a washer repairman, so I learned how to do it myself. YouTube videos are out there for everything."
Kidd typically works on his projects on Fridays, his day off, after he gets his kids off to school. He has a garage full of tools, hardware and doodads.
"If I'm at a garage sale and I think I can use something later, I'll buy it," he said. "But I'm not a hoarder. I have pretty good turnaround and I can usually keep things from piling up."
Once, he found a broken Adirondack chair on the side of the road. About that time, a friend of his told him he knew someone who was ripping up a deck. He used the chair as a template and used the old decking to build three new Adirondack chairs.
"Very little of our furniture is store-bought," he said. "Most of it we've acquired elsewhere."
When he was preaching at a church in New Mexico, one of the elders at the church, an old rancher, told Kidd he had a barn that was past its prime.
"He said I could have the wood if I tore it down," Kidd said. "I used the wood to make the coffee table in our den and to make several serving trays. The U-bolts on the trays that are the handles came off an old wagon wheel hub."
Many pieces in the Kidds' home are the product of Josh's handiwork: the sleigh bed in son Jackson's room, a decorative wooden box in the dining room made from old floor joists, a sofa table in the den made from part of an old church pew.
Some of the items he makes he ends up giving away.
"There are some things on the side of the road I just can't do anything with," he said. "Sometimes, it's just not worth it. But sometimes I'll find something and fix it, like a dresser, and then find out someone in the congregation needs one and can't afford to buy one. So it's kind of crossed over into my ministry as well."
That's where the name Resurrection Restoration comes into play.
"One of the members of our church saw what I was doing and coined the phrase Resurrection Restoration, so I decided to call my Facebook page that," he said. "I've actually sold some pieces through Facebook."
He's also sold some pieces to antiques shops.
"It's got to be real wood before I'll pick it up off the side of the road," he said. "Particle board is just too hard to repair. There have been times when I've drug a piece home and tried to make it work and couldn't do anything with it. Then I have to put it on my own curb for someone else to pick up."
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Information from: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, http://djournal.com
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
