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Antique Woodworks  Antique Flooring & Reclaimed Wood Products
Antique Flooring Fireplace Mantels Farm Tables Wood Countertops Wood Paneling Reclaimed Wood Log Cabins
Antique Wood Flooring Fireplace Mantels Farm Tables Countertops Wood Paneling Reclaimed Wood Log Cabins



Three Tables

Sunday, April 20, 2008

A conference room table, a side table, and a farm table all made from reclaimed wood from a barn, a log cabin, and a granary. It's amazing what this old wood has to say when put the right hands. A more complete set of pictures is posted in this photo album.

The first is a white oak farm table that has now found a new home in Wisconsin. The legs are from the first row of timbers from an old log cabin. They were hand-hewn on 2 sides and rounded, hewn-pealed on the other two sides. The end-grain of the legs comes through the table top, while the bolts to the supports are capped over with original log cabin pegs. The legs are accented with an old rusty iron silo bands. The triangular feet were designed to go along with the many other triangles on the bench and fireplace mantel. The tabletop itself was made from old floor joists from a granary. The joists had been planed and sanded just enough to make things smooth, but also give nice color. And the client says.... "Perfect! Heavy enough too - sheesh!" (yes, it probably was near 400 pounds.)

The second table is quite a departure from our typical tables -- much more formal, much more refined. That comes with good reason. This Rock Elm table was created by a highly skilled woodworker -- Randy Griffin from Greenfield, Indiana which is just outside Indianapolis. Going on it's 3rd life, it's hard to imagine that this wood started out it's second as a gray old log cabin. Randy says, "The end grain is really stunning, and I designed that in where I could... I would like to use the rock elm again... it is beautiful." The clean light colored straight grains on the surface accented with a more plain sawn stretcher. Things worked out beautifully with this one.

Finally, we come to one of my favorite tables. This four-by-nine foot conference room table with a farm style flair has a wonderful old white oak plank top accented with a original bolts and unique, exposed end-grain pedestals. Each pedestal was created by combining four 7x7 beams together into a single post. This created a much more massive scale and let us create this great end-grain panel on the tabletop. The individual beams were heavily sanded so that they would blend nicely with one another, yet retain some circle saw marks and some original flowing shape from the tree. The posts demonstrate the great variance colors that come naturally on the old white oak. And here's what the client says, "I love the table! It is exactly what I envisioned and what I wanted.It was a challenge getting it off the delivery truck but we did it.... Thanks for creating such a beautiful piece." More information on this table is available in the farm tables section of the site.

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Wood Countertop - Oak

Sunday, April 6, 2008

More pictures from clients. This one comes from a client near Chicago, Illinois. It's a wood countertop, or bar top, made from reclaimed white oak. It features a "live" edge full of character. The edge is particularly nice because it has lots of worm trails on it as well the irregular edge line. The top surface is what we'd consider more conservative in that it's a pretty clean interior cut from a beam. The top is a great accent to the faux stone bar sides.

This picture shows how this countertop started it's life. This little stick was about 18 feet long, 13 inches wide, and 6 inches thick. The first half of this old granary sill beam had already been used on another table top. We slab this piece out about 3 times more and off to the kiln it went After being in the kiln, we began to saw, plane, and glue pieces together. We made the countertop as one long piece originally. It was eventually cut and glued to create the 45 degree turn.

Finally, the sanding started. We sanded and sanded some more. We filled some holes with epoxy and sanded even more. After quite a bit of sanding, we finally arrived at something like the picture below.
After the sanding was complete, we applied 5 coats of Waterlox Tung Oil and we were ready to ship. If you're interested, there's several more pictures to browse. For other countertops, take a look at the wood countertops section of the website.

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A Floor with Patina

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

We get the question fairly regularly, "What is patina?" Patina is the word for the great colors on the surface of the wood (and metal for that matter) that develop over time. There's generally not a lot of ways to fake it well. It's something real that develops over time. It’s a warming of the wood. It's a deepening of color. Sometimes, it's a weathering to gray.

White oak and sometimes red oak are amongst the woods the react most favorably over time. Here's a rustic white oak floor that's all about patina. This floor was from original floor joists from a barn in Olivia, Minnesota. The only finish applied to this floor was Waterlox brand tung oil. There's no stain. It's good old patina applied by Mother Nature.

The original 2-by-8 material was removed from the barn floor joists – full of nails and warped like a boomerangs. As we brought it to the shop, many people (more than usual) said, "what the heck are you going to do with that garbage." "We're going to make a floor… just wait and see," I replied. So, we pulled nails, drilled nails, and otherwise tore the old square nails out. We split the wood into planks then we cut new straight edges. The pieces got a bit narrower and a bit shorter as the warping was removed. Finally, we ran it through our moulder to give us a nice straight edges, a flat back, and a lightly touched surface.

When we installed the floor, we sanded the corners on-site so that we’d have a hand-worked look, not a perfect machine edge. The floor was glued as well as face-nailed with square nails from the Tremont Nail Company.
So here's the result – a great floor that is the highlight of this old farmhouse remodel. The client was thrilled. She said, "this remodel wouldn't be the same without the floor. It absolutely makes the whole thing." Go ahead an browse the pictures of this project or take a look at the other antique wood flooring options that we have available.

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Barnwood Floor

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Spectacular. That's how I'd describe this Minnesota sun room. It's always nice to receive pictures from our clients. This room has a great floor made of old barnwood siding with the red paint side up. It was carefully hand sanded prior to install -- removing the gray, leaving a bit of color, and pushing into the natural wood tones. An oil based polyurethane was applied to deepen the color and provide a protecting finish. The room also hosts reclaimed pine trim. Browse through the pictures; they are a real treat.

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Valentines

Monday, February 11, 2008

Ah yes. It's Valentine's Week - the week of love and romance. In our barn endeavors, we seem to run into a few moments of shared love. A fortuitous heart shaped knot lends itself to the penknife etchings of Lance loves Robin. A moment in time preserved in wood. As it turns out, the current barn owner ran into a woman named Robin at the local watering hole. They got talking about various things and the love note came up in random conversation. Sure enough, the person named Robin at the bar and the name of Robin scratched on the barn wall were one in the same. When the Fountain City, Wisconsin barn was dismantled, the board was given to Robin as a keepsake of an old love.

In all of these old barns, we find the touch of an old craftsmen hewn and cut into each of the great beams over a century ago. In this old barn, we found the touch of a lover, two entwined hearts – AA and LD – carved into the wall 84 years ago in 1924. While the couple has past on, the touch of the knife to old wood remains a ghost of the love they shared.

Next, we have the story of an old farmhouse. As the old house was dismantled to make way for a new development, we removed the old floors and woodwork. Sealed in and hidden forever between the ceiling below and the floor above was a small metal lock box. Of course, our imaginations dreamed up contents of old stock certificates, paper dollars, and gold coins. The real contents, perhaps more valuable, turned out to be letters from Rita in St. Paul, Minnesota to Cyril in Cologne, Minnesota. The exchange of letters lasted 13 months from June of 1941 to July of 1942. The tone of the letters started as friends but later became romantic. Eventually, the couple was married in May of 1946. As fortune would have it, rather than riches, we got a chance peek at a growing love inside of a lockbox.

Finally, while not a love note, perhaps it is more. Buried inside the foundation of huge split granite field stones and cement was a Prince Albert Tobacco tin. We opened up the tin to find a prayer card inside. “God bless this home and bring us health and happiness.” In the end, isn’t that what all the romance is about?

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