SALVAGE LUMBER and DE-CONSTRUCTION

Reclaimed and Certified Wood
Woodworking has always been an important part of our business. We value fine craft and we use materials worthy of our efforts. For many years we used large quantities of old growth redwood, cedar, cypress, and douglas fir. As we watched the quality of the material decline, we also became dissatisfied about using material that was disappearing at a rate that far exceeded its renewal. In response, we decided a decade ago to source wood for our projects in new ways. We made the use of salvage and reclaimed lumber a priority, and our practices changed dramatically.

We learned that there is a wonderful and widespread salvage resource, but that using reclaimed wood is an intricate and subtle undertaking. The successful use of salvage requires large inventories, a good network of supply, specialized equipment, and careful integration of design processes to encourage best use and avoid square peg/round hole material use. It's like the saying, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. You'll waste time and annoy the pig." The same goes for reclaimed wood; the material must be appropriate to the use. For example, reclaimed wood often has character defects that add to its charm. Sometimes people say, "I want to use reclaimed wood but I want it to look flawless and perfectly color-matched." That's unusual with salvage. In general, for character, quality, and low environmental impact salvage can't be beat. At this point somewhere above 90% of all our exposed exterior and interior woodwork is reclaimed.

Sources of Reclaimed Wood
Our wood comes from all kinds of sources: wine and beer tanks, pickle barrels, whiskey barrel racks, dismantled warehouses and water towers, barns, - you name it. A wonderful by-product is the fine stories and interesting histories that come with salvaged wood. We share these stories with our clients in their owners' manuals. For example, our bread-and-butter wood is reclaimed cypress which is mined from river bottoms in the south. This material, known as "sinker" cypress, is timber that sunk to river bottoms in the South during the era - around the turn of the century - when they were logging the old growth cypress forests. A man we deal with in the Northern Florida panhandle salvages these logs from the bottom of the Choctawhatchee River. He mills them into rough boards, and we have them shipped to a kiln and mill where they are dried and dressed to our specifications. For a more detailed discussion see Buildings that Age Well.

Certified and Local
When salvage is not appropriate, we try to use local woods that come from our area or region. The epitome of this approach is to use wood that is cleared from the site where we're building or wood that is too misshapen to interest loggers. In our coastal area this is tough, because mostly all we have is twisty, gnarly, undersized oak trees. We've begun to put these throwaway trees to use as post and beams - with surprisingly pleasant results. Driftwood, too, has become a source of high-character railings and furniture.

We also source lumber certified to come from sustainably managed forest. Almost all of our exteriors are shingled with white cedar shingles from trees grown on lands owned by Seven Islands Land Co. .Seven Islands is a family owned business which owns more than a million acres of Maine woodlands. That's a lot of lumber. They have spent many thousands of dollars to have Scientific Certification Systems investigate their operation, certify their commitment, and make recommendations for how they can move their program even further along the road to sustainability. The Maibec company in Quebec buys their cedar from Seven Islands. They make wood shingles. We buy their shingles. A.E. Sampson is a flooring company in Warren Maine. They buy maple, ash and birch from Seven Islands and make it into high quality flooring. We buy it from them.

In addition to wood, we try to use as many materials as possible that are recycled and/or recyclable. We use tiles made from old automobile windshields, roof shingles made from discarded tires and plastic diaper manufacturing waste, carpet made from soda bottles, insulation made from recycled newspapers, and many architectural antiques.

Incrementally, and bit by bit, our sources of supply become more refined, and the parts of our buildings that use well-sourced wood and other materials grows. We use a hierarchy of mechanisms to make choices that ultimately get us what we want - fine material that suits our both our craft and environmental purposes.

THE BEAUTY OF UNDEVELOPMENT. Katherine Graham’s son, Bill, was left, after her death, with an 8000 SF summer house built in the 20’s. It was located at a magnificent spot that Bill had loved since he was a kid. He wondered what to do with this white elephant of a house in its magnificent setting. And suddenly, one day, it came to him: undevelopment. Just take it down and the spot would become even more beautiful. But he didn’t want to waste it. He called us to look at it. He wanted to know if we could cut it up and move it and make affordable housing out of it. Its way at the end of a long narrow dirt road flanked by stonewalls. John said it wasn’t feasible without cutting it into tiny pieces. But it was an incredibly evocative house, rich with fine materials.

“How about this,” John asked him. “Why don’t you pay us to dismantle it piece by piece? We can save 90% of the material and you can donate it to the Island Affordable Housing Fund and we’ll use it to build affordable housing. House people instead of topping off the landfill.” He agreed enthusiastically.

For three months 12 people worked in that house day in and day out. Jim Primdahl from Portland, Oregon, the Johnny Appleseed of deconstruction and used building materials, came by on his travels to consult for a few days. He helped us create a smooth, efficient process using advanced deconstruction techniques to salvage as much as we can as well as we can. About 50,000 BF of fine lumber was salvaged, along with assorted other fine materials.

At the end two stone chimneys were left standing in a magnificent restored landscape of native grasses.

Undevelopment. Now that’s a concept, isn’t it?

It's not always possible to deconstruct buildings slated for demolition. Some just don't lend themselves to it; more often owners don't want to take the time or pay the money (it's very labor intensive). But it's disturbing to see the wealth of valuable materials that find their way into the landfills.

We are currently in the process of exploring the feasibility of creating a Used Building Material Exchange on the Vineyard. These have been sucessful in many other communities in the US. We have approached our regional refuse district and requested that they lease us land for this purpose. Perhaps we'll be able to save more of the treasure that now goes to waste.