“The boy who grabs things on the street and restores them”, reads the TikTok profile of Kevin D’onofrio, or rather ‘Kevin to the rescue’. At the age of 21, he carries out a very particular activity: he walks the streets of Lomas de Zamora -where he lives- in search of furniture and wood that you can take home to give them a second life. His creations went viral and his work inspired many people to use their own hands to make something completely new out of the old. “I try to turn what I find into a treasure”assured LA NACIÓN.

Kevin’s routine is concrete: he roams Lomas de Zamora in search of some old wood that he can restore. Once he finds it, he takes it to his house where he grabs a handsaw, sandpaper and a bucket of paint and turns it into something completely new. He shares this whole process on his social networks where he receives thousands of comments and hundreds of ‘likes’.

Although he started posting videos in March of this year, this is something he’s been doing for as long as he can remember and He learned thanks to his grandmother. “When I was a boy and I stayed with her, we walked down the street and whenever I found a piece of furniture or something similar, he would take it home and reuse it. It is something that left a deep mark on me and today I go out two or three times a week looking for trash that can be turned into treasureKevin told THE NATION.

If you see his work, you would automatically think that the person who made it had some kind of background in interior design or carpentry, but that is not the case with Kevin. learned alone, or rather, with YouTube. “I was always very self-taught. Since I was a child I always watch videos of people who restore furniture. So at one point I thought it was time to put into practice all those ideas I had in my head and see if they gave a good result”, he affirmed.

Today, Kevin is almost 300 thousand followers on TikTokwhere he shares the routes through the streets of his neighborhood and as a tutorial, shows how he takes a piece of wood and turns it into a coat rack, a bedside table, a stool or some type of furniture that could be missing in your house.

During his walks he experiences all kinds of situations. Although some were unfortunate for him, they allowed him to learn lessons that helped him in his work as a restorer. “I find it very sad the moment when a person with the soul of a surgeon like me sees something in the distance that can become a treasure and does not take it. Once I was with my brother and we saw a couple of armchairs. We quickly went home to drop off the bikes when we came back to pick them up, we saw two people take them away very happily,” he recalled. Since then, he never let the opportunity pass by and now he takes the woodeven if you have to balance to avoid falling off the bike.

Carpentry, remodeling and construction aren’t the only things Kevin is passionate about. in 2021 finished musical theater degree at the Julio Bocca Foundation, and this year he began studying dubbing at the Instituto Superior de Enseñanza Radiofónica (ISER). However, she recognized that in the near future would like to train in something related to interior design.

In turn, he acknowledged that many people ask him to Open a workshop to send your furniture. While it’s something he’d like to do at some point, it’s still missing: “I want to make sure I have the tools to build trust and that my clients are 100% calm when they bring me their things”.

“People write to me thanking me because instead of throwing away an old table they are restoring it or they tell me that they were inspired by me to reform their house. Today I feel that my content exceeds the networks, there is a message that reaches others and that is a very nice feeling”, he said proudly.

What began as tours of the neighborhood with his grandmother, ended in a project with a clear message: “The trash of some can be the treasure of others”. At only 21 years old and with several YouTube videos on top of him, Kevin puts his own imprint on the wood he finds in a container garbage and became a source of inspiration for many people who see it on the networks.

In his house he set up a space to let his imagination fly and create something that makes it more beautiful, the bathroom or the living room. Among her wishes is the fact that she wants her story It will help others to get down to work: “The truth is that it’s always possible. Many people say ‘if I don’t have money to take the furniture restoration course I can’t learn anything’ and I don’t feel that way. Today with the Internet there is access to everything. If you seek, you find can be learned in many different ways”.