Floors With A Past

written by Monica Rogers, As appeared in the Chicago Tribune January 14, 2005

Sustainable and beautiful, restored wood also comes with a story

Southern Laos is a steamy place to conduct a real estate deal. But Erika Carpenter was unwilted - energized by her find. The dilapidated 70-year-old pole house she purchased last spring from local villagers yielded a treasure: teak. Milled into gleaming, dark-hued boards by TerraMai, Carpenter's wood reclamation firm based in McCloud, Calif., the wood will have a second life as a new floor for a U.S. homeowner seeking vintage planks over new hardwood.

"You do feel a bit like Indiana Jones in this business. It's been one adventure after another," says Carpenter, who switched from whitewater river-rafting business when she co-founded the wood reclamation company in the early 1970s. The pole house cost about $35,000, including de-construction and shipping the teak to a Thailand warehouse.

The lengths to which Carpenter and others in the industry will go to salvage wood from old warehouses, barns and even river bottoms is one indicator of how hot - and how competitive - the reclaimed wood market has become. Whether it is pre-revolutionary Russian oak intended for the Trans-Siberian Railroad, jarrah wood from Australian woolen mills or century-old redwood from California wine vats, more homeowners are seeking reclaimed woods for their home renovations.

Something to talk about

Prized for its ecological benefits and its beauty, homeowners also find that their reclaimed floors, trim and cabinets become instant conversation pieces.

Bruce Schlesinger, of Riverwoods, did. When he remodeled, he chose reclaimed red birch veneer for his kitchen cabinetry, stair treads and for the master bedroom furniture. The wood was salvaged from the bottom of Lake Superior. His first-floor flooring had more exotic history: Burmese telephone poles.

"It's good to know you've made a sound ecological decision, and it's fun to be able to tell guests your floors had a previous life as something as unusual as telephones poles, but the beauty of the floors extends far beyond the story and the ecology," he says.

James and Leigh Leasure of Houston did their entire upstairs floor in reclaimed teak from Indonesian pole houses. Says James: "We're ecologically minded and made the decision first based on that. The history of the wood fascinates our friends, and we didn't anticipate just how beautiful the wood would actually be."

The price of rare beauty

But such beauty comes with a price. Unlike some recycled products that carry a lower price tag than freshly manufactured equivalents, floors made from best-quality reclaimed woods are, like fine antiques, costly and rare. On average, reclaimed wood floor prices run from about $15 to $30 a square foot installed, depending on variety, compared to $9 to $14 for high-quality new woods. On the high end, prices can climb to $100 a square foot installed.

"This isn't just scrap lumber, " says 30-year industry veteran Max Taubert, president of the Duluth Timber Co. in Minnesota. Finding and processing the wood can be expensive, and in fact that some of the wood is increasingly rare also raises prices.

"There's a finite supply of old-growth longleaf yellow pine and Douglas fir," explains Jonathon Orpin, founder and owner of Pioneer Millworks, in Farmington, N.Y. "We'll never be able to re-create the growing conditions that existed before those forests were felled. So once we've finished harvesting the wood from old buildings and rivers, that will be it."

American chestnut, for example, once a common building material taken from Appalachian forests, was largely wiped out by a blight at the turn of the century. Though rare, it's still available from demolished old buildings and lake and river beds.

Costs incurred finding, transporting and processing reclaimed woods also are high. "Wood brought to our mills must first be cleaned of surface debris and metals, sorted for species, graded for yield an then carefully de-nailed, "explains Rick Guynn, sales and marketing manager for the Chambersburg, Pa. - based The Woods Co. Then it's re-sawn if required. Waste can reduce the yield 50 percent.

Yet despite its premium and advances in technology that can make new wood look distressed, reclaimed wood's popularity continues to grow. More than 40 million board feet a year of reclaimed wood sold in the United States, up from approximately 8 million board 10 years go, according to TerraMai.

Part of the reason is fashion: Darker woods, wide planks and character marks - dinks, scuffs and nail holes that hint at the wood's previous lives - are all part of the attraction.

Since 9/11, we've had more demand for floors that offer a sense of depth, nostalgia and a connection to the past," says Carpenter.

"My tenants love the fact that these floors have a story," says Mike Priebe, who used elm reclaimed from 400- to 600- year-old buildings in China and oak from 80-year-old English hard-cider vats for floors in four commercial buildings he restored in Wausau, Wis. "With the cider wood, there's a rusticity to the look - with knots and indentations - that adds character you just can't get with new wood."

Why is old-growth wood prized? Growing conditions before 1900 produced tight grain, many growth rings and few knots. Take longleaf yellow pine, for example. "When these trees first grew in America, there were a lot of them competing for the same nutrients in the soil," explains Mountain Lumber founder Willie Drake. "So they grew very slowly. Packed closely together, the trees had to stretch straight skyward and any branches that developed dropped off."

Taken altogether, these facts translate to beautiful, dense wood with tight grain and many growth rings. Conversely, trees of these species that were planted after 1900 grew at a faster rate and sprouted more branches that didn't drop off, resulting in knottier wood with less "heart" wood and more sapwood.

Going green

And, of course, there's the ecological attraction of recycling wood. According to New York-based Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program, reclaiming 1 million board feet saves 1,000 acres of forest.

Evanston-based architect Nathan Kipnis, a green-home advocate, just specified the use of reclaimed red oak flooring from San Rafael, Calfi.-based EcoTimber for a home that he's building in Riverwoos. "The flooring is milled from standing dead and wind-fallen trees," Kipnis explains.

Chosen because the owners wanted an ecologically sustainable house with a rustic look, Kipnis says "the character of the wood turned out to be a design asset. I've had a lot of interior designers mentally roll their eyes and look at green as a design impediment. This time because of the beauty of the wood, they were thrilled."

Much has changed since the '70s when industry pioneers first started. "We used to beg demolition crews not to burn this stuff, but to let us have it instead," recalls Carpenter. "They used to look at us like we were crazy." Duluth Timber's Taubert agrees. "In the '70s demolition crews practically gave away the wood."

Not any longer. "Today there are frequently bidding wars over wood," says Drake.

"Anybody whose grandma's cousin's aunt's barn just fell down is suddenly in the reclamation business," says Orpin, a fact that should out customers on their guard when shopping.

Homeowners interested in reclaimed wood floors for their homes need to ask questions and know what kind of wood they're buying. Has the wood been kiln dried? Is it certified?

Because industry governing regulations and uniform grading standards aren't available yet, it's important to conduct research to ensure that the wood is from a reputable source. (Major manufacturers have created the Reclaimed Wood Council and are developing manufacturing guidelines.) Ask for samples, references and about product guarantees. "You want to be sure the wood is really reclaimed, and not from somebody who's out there just clear-cutting an area," says Kipnis.

Talking wood

Just as a sommelier uses well-tuned woods to describe the mouth feel, flavors and finishes of a fine wine, those who love woods have their own vocabulary.

Depending on the grade and species, one reclaimed wood may be described as "exceptionally tough with a rich butterscotch base highlighted by chocolate swirls and bird's-eye details." Another is "eye-catching, with a mix of red and yellow heartwood, dark-brown knots and occasional blonde sapwood that patinizes to deeper red."

The following primer, from Ashland, Wis.-based Timeless Timber Inc., helps with the basics.

Figure: The patter produced in a wood surface by annual growth rings, rays, knots and deviations from regular grain, such as interlocked and wavy patterns.

Grain: The direction, size, arrangement, appearance or quality of the fibers in sawn wood. Straight grain is used to describe limber where the fibers and other longitudinal elements run parallel to the axis of the piece.

Hardwood: A description applied to woods from deciduous broad-leafed trees. The term has no reference to the actual hardness of the wood.

Heartwood: The inner layers of wood in growing trees that have ceased to contain living cells. Heartwood is generally darker that sapwood, but the two are not always clearly differentiated.

Sapwood: The outer zone of wood in a tree, next to the bark. Sapwood is generally lighter than heartwood.

Knots: Hard, cylindrical regions marking locations of branches that have been encased by later growth of the tree.

Growth ring: Layer of wood added to a tree during a single growing season.