A Mall Maul
Merriam Webster's entry for maul says:
Main Entry: maul
Pronunciation: 'mol
Etymology: Middle English malle mace, maul, from Old French mail, from Latin malleus; akin to Old Church Slavonic mlatu hammer, Latin molere to grind
Definition: a heavy often wooden-headed hammer used especially for driving wedges; also : a tool like a sledgehammer with one wedge-shaped end that is used to split wood
Little did we realize that we would want a maul at our local mall.
We sometimes go to architectural salvage yards where cool stuff has been pulled out of houses and is being sold for re-use. We have also been to residential construction sites that are being torn down, where you can rip out windows, doors, flooring, cabinets, just about anything, sometimes even plants. We have also received lots of nice stuff from Bill's job sites. But, one place we did not expect to find ourselves ripping out building materials was our local shopping mall. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we spent our Saturday morning not strolling the shoe department or book store, but removing reusable stuff from a retail store.
We had dinner on the Friday night before with a friend who is an architect for a large, well-known chain of high-end retail stores. She had just closed two old stores and opened two new stores in a big mall near our house. After talking over dinner, we walked down the street and looked in the window of a furniture store in our neighborhood, gazing at a beautiful bookcase/wall unit thingie. She suddenly said, "If you're free tomorrow, you can have one of those free." Huh? Turns out that all of the furniture, fixtures, and hardware are up for grabs when a store closes, since it will all be demolished by the new tenant. Whoa, we said.
It turns out that the shelves in the store's wall unit were just too deep for our needs, so we left it behind, but did snag two nice ceiling fans, some great halogen track lights, glass shelves, about 15 brushed steel hinges, and miscellaneous knobs. Woo hoo! It was a little odd hanging out for four hours in an empty shell of a store while frenzied purchasing went on in other stores, but we were very happy to receive the goodies.
