Reuse Helps You Save Money on Home Improvement -- Q&A With Jodi Murphy

Before she became the queen of demolition salvage, Jodi Murphy was a young wife whose aspirations for a beautiful home stretched beyond what her bank account would allow.

She discovered an unorthodox source for the fixtures, appliances and building materials she coveted: houses slated for demolition or renovation. These items otherwise were scheduled for the landfill, so selling them for even a fraction of the original cost was found money for the home owners.

Two decades later, Murphy's Chicago-based business, Murco Recycling Enterprises, has helped fuel thousands of low-cost home improvement projects by connecting buyers with homes where literally everything must go. She hosted Planet Green's "Total Wrecklamation" in 2008-09 and was inducted into the Environmental Hall of Fame last year.

We caught up with Murphy to learn how demolition harvesting can help you save money on your home improvement projects -- and help save the planet.

Viewpoints: How do you explain your business to people? It sounds like a cross between eBay and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Jodi Murphy: What we do is broker building materials - and we do it through various different methods. One, our main bread and butter is through home salvage auction, where the entire house is either being demolished or renovated, so everything's fair game. Kitchen cabinets, flooring, windows - if it's there, we want to sell it. We want to disperse materials that were heretofore bound to go to landfill to people who can then use them to live in a manner that is higher than their checkbook balance would imply. So if you're willing to put in the energy, you can get fantastic deals on quality building materials. So we do it through home salvage auctions, but we also broker things directly online, doing smaller projects, and we have a warehouse as well. ... We're out to move materials, to keep materials out of the landfill. That's our main goal. Why are we throwing away things and resources that would actually improve people's lives?