O.C. Woman Creates Contractor Craig's List

LEED-Accredited Landscape Designer, Angelia Woodside-Beckstrom Photo courtesy of Angelia Woodside-Beckstrom

''Your Assignment, should you choose to take it . . .'' And that she did.

You've got an orphan load of rocks. Or bricks. Or wood planks. What to do? 

Until recently, even licensed contractors might have been forced to dump them in the landfill. But a Mission Viejo woman, Angelia Woodside-Beckstrom recently invented another option: ContractorBoneyards.com.

The web site, launched just four weeks ago, allows licensed contractors to buy and sell excess building materials -- potentially a way to vastly increase recycling, a major concern for ''green'' builders.

''Recycling means materials diverted from the waste stream become a different type of finished product,'' said the site's creator, Angelia Woodside-Beckstrom.  She said she wasn't quite prepared for the response: rapid-fire emails from landscape professionals around the country.

''I bounced it off a couple contractor friends who said, 'I can't believe this has not been done,''' she said. '''This is a great idea. I put out an announcement and got a lot of communication from people all over the country. I thought to myself, surely this couldn't be the first one.'' But apparently, it is. Woodside-Beckstrom, who owns her own landscaping business, is starting small, with only a few dozen contractors posting photos of what they are selling, or describing what they need, along with zip codes on the site. ''It was like, 'How can we embed an EBay type of function with a Craig's list type of flair?'' The site is powerful enough, she said, to hold ''thousands of users across the nation.''

Those who sign up must post their contractor's licenses. ''I'd like to keep it completely professional,'' Woodside-Beckstrom said.

She once worked with a software company, and is a LEED-accredited landscape designer; she simply mingled the best of both worlds. She hopes the flurry of early interest means use of her site will become widespread.

''A lot of them are really hurting financially,'' she said of landscape contractors. ''If they have some type of way to get revenue for their family around Thanksgiving, off stuff just sitting there, I'd sure like to help them out.''