Conscious Choice: New Uses for Old Wood

December 2005

New Uses for Old Wood

By Ed Knapp

Look around you. What do you see being wasted in an old structure in the country, or even in the city? What materials are being discarded? Are you able to see beyond the dust, the chipping paint, or the mortise holes to the underlying craftsmanship, the legacy that discarded materials may hold, and the historical stories they can tell? What can you do with it? What can you design with it? How can it become a physical, living part of your home? What are you wasting? What can you yourself pass on in a society that already has so much?

In the twenty-first century, recycling has become a regular part of our lives: we sort used materials into that which can be reused, and that which can’t. Under nearly every desk in every corporation, both major and minor, are two trash cans — one for recyclables and one for non-recyclables. There are even environmentally aware companies such as Yvon Chounard’s Patagonia and Malden Mills that create warm, functional, beautiful clothing from the most unlikely resources: used plastic soda bottles.

But recycling isn’t limited to the wastepaper basket or the garbage bin. All over the country, in rural areas as well as in bustling cities, antiques shops stand side by side with chain stores; collectors and average shoppers alike spend hours looking for a diamond in the rough, that special something for their homes that was discarded long ago. It might be a long-closed post office’s solid oak mail sorter, now doing creative service somewhere as a spice holder or a compact disc stand. An old discarded oak filing cabinet may find new life as a built-in storage space for treasured record albums. Or it might be something, perhaps, with an engraved insignia that offers a clue — and a link — to the item’s history.

Antiques, whatever they are and however we use them, are often well-crafted, well-designed connections to the past. Reclaimed, salvaged antique wood and other traditional construction materials are no different.

Reclaiming Construction Materials

Beyond its purely aesthetic potential, the concept of reclaiming materials is alive and well in all of its various guises, and is an important way for us to preserve our limited resources, particularly wood. While forests are a renewable resource, they are certainly not renewed quickly. And as our building and logging boom continues, we must keep in mind that, in the United States, construction materials alone comprise approximately 60 percent of our landfill burden. The use of reclaimed construction materials — old barn wood, flooring, beams, and much more — is a highly practical way to preserve our natural resources. And hand in hand with practicality go the issues of quality, design integrity, and craftsmanship that enable a musty load of nineteenth-century, hand-planed pine flooring to be pressure-cleaned to its original beauty and reused today, many generations later. In most cases, the design integrity and quality that enabled its survival is incomparable.

Production and design of construction materials has come a long way since the days of hand-carving individual beams and boards for a home or a barn. A process that used to take days and even weeks has been transformed into an industry standard: uniform building materials are created by forming the wood with motorized sawmills and modern milling machines. Production times are swift, but the quality is low and the craftsmanship next to nonexistent. The character of the materials — the grain pattern, life, history, and functionality: that which makes wood wood — becomes of secondary importance as they are being quick-formed and machine-milled for immediate use. Compare a modern 2 x 6-foot board from your local lumberyard to an old pit-sawn board of similar dimensions. There is simply no comparison in quality or character.

Designing with Reclaimed Materials

Aside from the obvious conservation and historical implications that come with the use of reclaimed (or salvaged) building materials is the issue of aesthetics: a wide range of these materials is providing an entirely new perspective in home design. From down home to downtown, salvaged materials are showing up in state-of-the-art country kitchens as cabinetry; as sharply contrasting, distressed flooring and detailing in otherwise monochromatic modern living lofts; and, more simply, in the re-creation of traditional-style homes whose owners long for the authenticity, practicality, and craftsmanship of these beautiful materials.

In many cases, entire buildings that have been demolished are being reclaimed by architectural salvage companies, moved, and then rebuilt from scratch as new/old buildings; their interiors, replete with modern conveniences, are perfectly juxtaposed against the rich, aged craftsmanship of the original building’s materials.

In response to this call for reclaimed materials, recycling and architectural salvage companies that handle a range of materials are springing up all over the country. It is evident that there is a vital need to educate homeowners, homebuilders, architects, and designers in using recycled wood and other building materials by implementing the traditional applications and techniques that have enabled the materials to survive in the first place. New Old House will educate, offer suggestions, address problems before they crop up, and ultimately showcase the myriad design possibilities and creative applications associated with utilizing antique recycled materials, while maintaining the ages-old traditions on which they were originally built.

Ed Knapp is the owner and operator of Vintage Beams & Timbers, an import/export company specializing in reclaiming vintage building materials. Knapp also works internationally with a particular emphasis on architectural reclamation in China. He works out of a renovated barn in Sylva, North Carolina, and also has an office in China.

From New Old House by Ed Knapp (Copyright 2002). Reprinted with permission Gibbs Smith, Publisher. $19.95 Paperback. Available at bookstores nationwide and Amazon.com.

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