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Metropolis Editors, Natural Habitat, sustainability, sustainable architecture

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The series debuts with a tour of a tranquil upstate New York retreat designed with Passive House principles.

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Man pulling a dolly in a warehouse full of doors stacked on shelves.
Andrew Ellsworth, founder of Doors Unhinged, in his warehouse. COURTESY ENTREPRENEURS FOREVER

August 14, 2023

Salvage Superstar: Doors Unhinged

This Pittsburgh company is one of seven groups drawing on breakthrough research, tools, and sourcing systems to change building-material reuse.

By: Nigel F. Maynard

“This profile is part of a series on seven breakthrough innovators changing the way we recycle building materials.” 

Andrew Ellsworth spent his entire career at the intersection of architecture and sustainability, including stints at a material reuse center in Pittsburgh and a local chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. It made total sense, then, when Ellsworth founded Doors Unhinged, a company that sources and sells used commercial doors, frames, and hardware.

“I started the company about five years ago, though I conceived of it maybe ten years ago,” says Ellsworth, who has a BArch from Carnegie Mellon University. Specifically, he got the idea during his time working on construction projects, when the demolition of buildings generated mountains of materials–including barely used doors.

“I [saw] an unrealized opportunity in construction waste. We had all these high-quality materials going to the landfill because there was nothing else to do with them.” 

Andrew Ellsworth
Man brushing wood shavings from a door in a warehouse full of doors
COURTESY ENTREPRENEURS FOREVER

“I [saw] an unrealized opportunity in construction waste. We had all these high-quality materials going to the landfill because there was nothing else to do with them.”

Ellsworth’s mission was simple: take those doors, frames, and hardware and put them back into projects, unlocking both environmental benefits and cost savings. Since starting in his home, the company has expanded into a 5,000-square-foot headquarters with almost 1,000 doors in inventory, and claims to be the only supplier of reclaimed commercial door systems in the United States.

The doors, sourced from commercial projects, are often in pristine condition but occasionally need a slight touch-up. “Sometimes the customer wants to have them painted, so it requires us to remove the existing finish so the paint adheres well,” Ellsworth says.

The potential stream of material is vast, so the company does very little prospecting to keep up its inventory. But it does have to work to find clients interested in taking items. “There’s an imbalance in the market right now where there’s so much material being thrown away and so few projects that are installing them again,” Ellsworth says.

But he remains hopeful. “Ideally we’d love to scale up our capacity and move a lot more doors in inventory and very quickly be able to respond to the needs of an individual project.” 

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