Photo By Ray Hughey Mike Byrnes had plenty of interesting odds and ends that often wind up becoming the treasure of someone else. All of that from his unique Aurora shop.

By Ray Hughey
For the Independent
Given its own history in the community of Aurora, it seems fitting that the 19th century feed mill at its heart become a repository for items with histories of their own.
For the last nine years, the sprawling mill built better than a century ago has served as the Aurora Mills Architectural Salvage.
Within its walls lay tens of thousands of items salvaged from old buildings and homes. It holds doors, windows, claw foot bathtubs, door and window hardware, fireplace mantles, bricks, beams, timbers, hinges, faucets, spigots, plumbing parts and lighting.
"We have a lot," said owner Mike Byrnes.
All vintage and antique. Nothing after 1950 and as old as it gets.
Byrnes owns and operates Old House Restoration contracting company, which specializes in restoring historic buildings. He has restored several buildings in Aurora and acquired a few himself in the process.
"I sort of fell in love with Aurora," he said.
And he had been keeping an eye on the old mill.
"It was always one of those buildings I admired," he said.
He was concerned that if it ceased operating as a mill, someone might tear it down.
"We contacted the owners every year five or six years, telling them if they ever wanted to sell, to give us a call. And one day they called us," he said. "We were pretty excited we could preserve the building."
He didn't know what he was going to do with the building when he bought it.
His restoration business was growing and he had accumulated salvaged items that needed to be stored. That was when the mill came up for sale, he said.
"We opened the salvage and started getting this material back out to the public and reused," he said.
The word salvage confuses some people, but they didn't want to sound highbrow. It's all a lot of regular stuff -- moldings, barn wood, windows, etc. But there's a lot of good material out there, he said.
The biggest item he has ever had there? Probably the cartouche off the Capital Theater in Salem. It was like a big medallion on top of the theater. It stood 6 feet tall and weighed about 2,000 pounds.
"We had to get a crane to take it down," he said.
Even an item that size sat only four months before it sold.
McMenamin's bought it and installed it at the old St. Francis School in Bend, he said.
The most expensive item? Probably a full-size, 1920s bronze elevator door with an Egyptian motif, he said.
It went for over $5,000. A guy in Sedona, Ariz., bought it for his house.
Byrne has been restoring buildings and homes in Aurora since 1978.
He has done about 10 buildings, including the Mohler, Keil and Stauffer-Will houses of the historic Aurora Colony.
In 1990, his firm moved the two-story log Miley House, the original ferryboat stop the Aurora Colony built in Charbonneau. It was restored and now is Sunnyside Antiques.
The Byrnes business also moved the Gordon House built from plans by Frank Lloyd Wright from Charbonneau to the Oregon Gardens in Silverton where it sits today.