Turning the old to the new

The old saying that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' always rings in my ear when sifting through a pile of old recycled timber. Most people simply discard old timber as junk for the bin, or maybe even as firewood for a cold wintery night, but few would look at a nail covered old housing stud, or cobweb covered piece of furniture and think, yep, i'll turn that into something beautiful! 

It's like staring at an empty room on a house inspection and seeing how you can bring that room to life, by adding furniture, paintings, or colour to make it uniquely yours.

Time can do horrible things to timber, especially outside in the weather, but it can also preserve it. Our most recent haul of recycled timber came from a 1950's Melbourne home being renovated. The hardwood studs behind the horsehair plaster where in pristine condition (Minus the cobwebs and spiders!) and once de-nailed, where a real treat to feed through the planer to uncover the beautiful grain beneath. Hardwood framed houses are a things of the past in Australia, which means any timber you can pull out of them is old, I mean seriously old. Take this example, the house built in the 50's makes the timber already 70 years old. Then add the time the tree spent growing in the ground, before being cutdown and milled, it would easily be 150 years since this timber was but a mere seed.

Pretty crazy to think that this bit of timber has already lived a life longer than any human currently on the planet, and is now getting another lease on life as a skateboard.

Another recent pick up was this old church pew. Not an uncommon piece of furniture found in homes, patios and gardens around Australia, but another piece of very old hardwood that once dressed will be turned into a beautiful board.

To me that's the amazing thing about timber. Treated well, it can last not just one lifetime, but at least two or three! If we treated all of our belongings with that level of care and thoughtfulness the world might just be a tiny bit better.

Check out the store for our range of boards featuring these and other recycled timbers today.