Rusty Gold Brewing

As an antique dealer and house flipper and contractor, E.J. Kleckner is all about, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

“But,” he says with a grin, “that sounds too long for a brewery name.”

And so when it came time for the young businessman to dub the brewpub he has opened on the main drag in downtown Canonsburg in Washington County, he came up with a shorter way to say it: “Rusty Gold.”

The Rusty Gold Brewing Co. — in an old brick storefront on West Pike Street — is decorated, outside and in, with old barn wood and corrugated metal. The early 1800s barnwood-topped bar is made from doors from a tear-down farmhouse. Tables and seating, too, are made from everything from barrels to church pews.

“All this was built on site — custom,” says Mr. Kleckner, who himself used a 1-inch stippling brush to hand paint the rust on the bulkhead over the bar that was built to look like an old train trestle.

The original white-and-black tile floor and bronze-painted tin ceiling (from the building’s 1920s roots as a bakery, before it was a market, pool hall and then 1950s-themed Toy’s My Way Cafe) are perfect fits for the theme. There are steam-punk touches such as a hard hat-and-pump lamp and a rescued-from-a-fire clock. Otherwise, the walls are adorned with metal signs, fire extinguishers and other artifacts. The front opens up via a newfangled garage-door-style window above a bar. Mr. Kleckner had to do some big-time modernizing of plumbing and electric. But much of the rest of the reno he says was done with repurposed materials, including dropped ceiling from a bowling alley. “I tell you, I Frankensteined all sorts of businesses.”