Photos courtesy of Wood-Mizer
“After high school, I started tree planting in Western Canada and could see the logging clear cuts, which disturbed me,” Lincoln says. “I have a love of nature and wondered what I could do to help the forest in addition to planting trees.”
Source: Reclaiming old growth timber in Saskatchewan | Wood Business
The Legg House was demolished last June to make way for a tower. Doors from the heritage residence are among the items for sale at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s sale of architectural salvage items. Photograph by: Arlen Redekop, PNG
Ironic in that we tear down 1900s arts and crafts homes, built with old-growth fir, leaded casement windows, wood-planked floors, stained glass windows and French pocket doors, and replace them with boxy pseudo Craftsman eyesores hastily constructed of chipboard and drywall, the solid wood and artistic detail of yore replaced by slapped-on stucco and MDF.
via Shelley Fralic: The sad reality of architectural salvage.
Matt Sears examines a wooden beam of the demolished building at Market and Main streets in Chattanooga. Photo by Contributed Photo /Chattanooga Times Free Press .
Thick poplar trees covered the Tennessee Valley a hundred years ago. But they were steadily cut down and used as lumber, and now the old-growth wood is nearly impossible to find.
“It’s not available in stores, and there is a limited quantity of it left in the world,” said Matt Sears, owner of Haskel Sears Design, which makes wooden furniture.
Which is why he was excited to find 25-foot-long old-growth poplar floor and ceiling joists in the old brick building on the southeast corner of Main and Market streets. The building has since been demolished to make room for a new mixed-use apartment and retail complex.
But not before Sears got the wood out.
“We pulled the building down without disturbing the valuable materials inside of it,” Sears said. “We also discovered some pine beams and some steel beams that had Woolworth’s stamped on them.”
Malachi Milbourn sees stories in the wood he works. The 28-year-old North Portland resident finds and salvages pieces of old-growth wood from buildings throughout the state that are deconstructed or torn down.
He turns the wood into coffee tables, side tables, dinner tables and other furniture, then sells them through his business, Against the Grain. He has made furniture with wood from a Corvallis hops mill built in 1910, a Molalla barn built in 1900 and parts of the Oregon State Hospitals original building, which was partially demolished in 2010.
Against the Grain
On the Web:
againstthegrainpdx.com
By email:
malachimilbourn@yahoo.com
In person:
His North Portland studio, at 7401 N Albina Ave., is open by appointment only.
via Malachi Milbourn turns to old buildings for old-growth wood he turns into furniture | OregonLive.com.
Often when I write about wood, commenters note that it isn’t as durable as other materials. And while that might be true of 2×4 wood frame construction, it isn’t about heavy timber. The most surprising I have ever seen is in Bologna, Italy.
Almost all of the buildings in Bologna have arcades, which protect pedestrians from the elements, not to mention horses then and motor scooters now, and most are now built of brick. (stone is rare up here in northern Italy)
Back in the 13th century, however, they built this arcade in wood. Here it is, eight hundred years later, and the exposed wood of the arcade is still there, still holding up masonry walls above it.
Now it is true that we don’t see a lot of wood of these dimensions in the lumber yard these days, but we have new technologies that can give us pretty much the same thing. I think that holding up a brick building for eight hundred years is pretty impressive.