Barn wood works well in modern rooms

Reclaimed wood adds character and warmth to your home with an eco-friendly touch.

When it comes to flooring, fixtures and furniture, there’s nothing like the warmth of wood to soften the look of a room. But when that wood happens to come from a 19th-century Midwestern barn, aesthetics merge with environmental sensibilities to create a conversation piece that will make your friends, well, green with envy. Reclaimed wood is as hot as ever. Here’s the rundown on how to use it, why to use it and where to find it.

Applications
Reclaimed wood is generally taken from late 18th- and early 19th-century barns, mills, elevators and factories for reuse. Interior designers and architects often embrace it for both its time-tested quality and for the character found from markings such as stamped brand names, nail holes and saw marks. While flooring, furniture and paneling are the most popular applications for reclaimed wood, there are few limits for its uses.

“A door doesn’t have to be a door,” says Kelly Potter, owner and vice president of Phoenix-based Wood Expressions, a maker of fine custom cabinetry and furniture. “An old interior door might make a wonderful table top or headboard. You can be creative and find new functions for old wood.”

For example, her company took a large, old Mexican carved picture frame, cut off the intricate carvings and fashioned a fireplace hearth from them.

Reclaimed wood cabinets add warmth and rustic charm to a bathroom.

Jeff Frost, sustainability coordinator with SmithGroup architecture firm, did numerous reclaimed wood projects when he was with the now-defunct A.K.A. Green eco-friendly retail and services company in Scottsdale. These included converting reclaimed barn wood into a 6-foot-wide pivot entry door and creating a kitchen island face from 4-inch slivers of barn wood fashioned to look like siding.

“It created this rustic, cowboyish look to a house we were doing in Wickenburg,” Frost says.

No matter the application, Frost recommends reclaimed wood as a perfect fit for both traditional and modern architecture.

“For modern applications, barn wood complements stainless steel, bright colors, glass and rusted steel. Wood softens those hard features,” he says.
Advantages

• Eco-friendliness. The utilization of reclaimed wood is the equivalent to saving a tree – or several. Plus, it maximizes the life of wood that was already harvested long ago. In eco-friendly circles, this is called extending the “embodied energy” or the fossil fuels and natural resources used in the manufacture of a product. “Using reclaimed wood is an extended use of a material that already has a lot of embodied energy,” Frost says. In other words, reclaimed wood buyers maximize the sunlight, water and resources already expended a century ago when old trees were harvested for barns and mills.

• Heritage. A 19th-century barn captures both the romance and old-fashioned workmanship of a bygone era in American history. “One day all the wooden barns, mills and elevators will be gone. Utilizing these pieces gives us a piece of old American history. That’s hard to beat,” Potter says.

• Aesthetics. A lot of people think when they use reclaimed wood it’s going to look like the boardwalk at Rawhide. “This is not the Old West,” Potter says. “We can put a clear coat or stained seal over it and it will look nice and clean.” That said, depending on the degree of milling, reclaimed wood can retain the distress marks that give it character. This includes visually interesting nail holes, worm holes, rust patterns and possibly even horseshoe marks or patterns of use.

• Durability. Reclaimed wood often has been weathered with decades of rain, wind, snow and wear. “It’s already seasoned. There’s less chance of drying, cracking and splitting,” says Praneeta Rao, co-owner of Natural Products, a Scottsdale home furnishings store that carries reclaimed wood furniture.

 
• Variety. Twentieth century Midwestern barns were most often built by clearing a field and using the lumber harvested from that field. Reclaimed wood sources include oak, pine, cherry, hickory, beech, fir and even the very rare American Chestnut, which was nearly rendered extinct by a fungal blight in the early 20th century.

• Southwestern appeal. Though much reclaimed wood comes from “Barn Belt” states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania or West Virginia, it’s a natural fit for any Southwestern décor. “It has a chunky, rustic or modern look. It could go in an ultra modern home or a traditional adobe or Sante Fe-style home. It fits well into any look,” Rao says.

Experts agree there may be only two disadvantages to reclaimed wood – availability and cost. “Finding old barns and buildings is getting harder,” Potter says, adding that a trend toward eco-friendly construction has increased salvaged wood’s popularity.

Cost factors in as well. For example, Paul Newman, owner of Premiere Wood Floors in Scottsdale, says that a reclaimed wood floor can cost up to $20 per foot at its high point and can average $2 to $3 per foot more than a traditional cut wood floor.

Barn wood adds character to floors.

Where to Find It
Adventuresome types and skilled D-I-Yers may enjoy hitting salvage yards and local lumber suppliers to hunt for reclaimed wood. Most often, however, customers rely upon professionals to locate and craft reclaimed wood.

Frost cautions against purchasing reclaimed wood sight unseen from online suppliers. First of all, Frost says the characteristics of reclaimed wood vary so greatly that it’s better to see it first. If online purchasing is your preferred option, try finding reputable suppliers through the U.S. Green Building Council.

Many wood companies and mills take photographs of the structures they reclaim and pass those along to the consumer. Every piece of reclaimed wood has a pedigree, so to speak. In the certification world, this is called “chain of custody.” Don’t be shy about asking for it.

Locally, there are businesses that specialize in reclaimed wood. Newman estimates that one-third of his flooring projects are reclaimed. He urges potential buyers to purchase kiln-dried wood as opposed to air-dried wood.

“Old wood can get infested with little living creatures. This actually adds to the beauty when you get to the worm holes in the wood,” he says. “But air-drying it doesn’t always kill the things that are in it.”

You may even luck out and find local suppliers who cut out the middleman and find reclaimed wood themselves. Kevin Holt of Phoenix’s KP Holt Enterprises actually travels to the Midwest to tear down century-old, hand-hewn, hardwood timber-frame barns.

“I simply approach landowners and ask if I can buy their barns,” Holt says. He cuts it down, ships it and then builds fireplace mantles – to the tune of $100 to $300 per foot. Holt also turns stable gates into tables or rafters into accent beams for modern homes.

He says the effort is worth it. “The kind of stuff I make – when it leaves my shop it will be passed down from generation to generation,” Holt says. “There is intrinsic value in that.”

RESOURCES
KP Holt Enterprises
602-861-2577
yesterdaystimber.com

Natural Territory
15816 N. Greenway Hayden Loop, Ste. 300, Scottsdale
480-998-2700
naturalterritory.com

Premiere Wood Floors
3519 E. Shea Blvd.,
Scottsdale
(showroom by appointment only)
480-991-3393
premierewoodfloors.com

Wood Expressions
1619 W. Knudsen Drive, Phoenix
623-444-7340
woodexp.com