I have a couple of friends who are die hard thrifters. They check things like Facebook Marketplace and the local Craigslist for all sorts of shit. The kind of person who gets excited when they see like a pile of sand outside or a dumpster, they go check out what the project is and if there is some old shit they can get for free. In my eyes it's usually a lot of crap and not worth the effort, but I respect the game, respect the recycling/re-use aspect and sometimes it's really cool old stuff which is worth restoring.

In my dealings with these friends I have not once, but twice taken apart some random kitchen somewhere with the purpose of putting it back together again. It feels really weird to just show up at someones home, who wants their kitchen demolished. But we offer to do it for them, so we can know how shit went together and prevent any damage from taking it apart. One time we took the kitchen apart and put it back together more or less as it was, but in the garage of my friend. Very useful to have a bunch of storage space and a good working surface. The other time it was a vintage kitchen which was falling apart, it was trash. I spent so much time sanding, cutting out old pieces of bad wood, matching new pieces of the right kind of wood, painting, varnishing etc. But in the end it turned out as a beautiful "new" kitchen, they still use that kitchen every day for the past 8 years.