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A client in Silverlake just sent us these shots of the bookcases we built, now painted by Carl Tillmanns. Carl is also painting the kitchen we just updated. Usually, we finish cabinets ourselves, but in this case we delivered paint-grade.
The view from this room is fantastic. When I shoot the kitchen and wine oak desk—installing next week—I’ll have to get another shot.
It’s been almost a year since I first blogged about a great salvaged and reclaimed lumber source in Southern California. We headed there again this past weekend to buy wood for two different outdoor bench projects. At Tule Peak Timber, we went through their collection of urban salvage, fire kill, beetle kill and reclaimed lumber. Every tree has a story of how it arrived at this beautiful (albeit windy that day) spot.
The live edge of this slab will accent the front of a modern home.
We came home with one 12 foot redwood slab. This redwood tree was declared a fire hazard by the fire service, and was ordered off personal property after it fell down. The cedar we bought for the other bench has a similar story, fire clearance. But, the most common story is large scale residential development. Whether it is developers or the government, the regular process is to put it in a landfill. Using salvaged wood gives these 100+ year old trees a chance to live on.
There are local sources like this in every region. Why not search one out for your next project.
I feel like we just picked out a puppy! After several meetings with a client, hours surfing the internet and talking to our vendors, we found the perfect piece of walnut. It’s big enough for the eight foot dining table and a little something extra.
This is from Goby Walnut in Portland, OR
It was a close contest. We presented finds from Goby Walnut, Tule Peak Timber, Baker Hardwoods, Anderson Plywood and a father and son from Davis who happened to drop by Monday with a beautiful stack of book-matched sets in their (classic 70′s) pick-up.
What makes this sustainable? Art, at Goby, identified this tree “urban salvage”. It is “beetle kill” and had to be cut down to prevent the diseased branches from falling off on people or things. It is from a farm, so technically, is that “rural salvage”?
The slab is off to the kiln for a few months. I’ll let you know when it gets here.
Here are the other choices we offered. Which is your favorite?
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- This is from Goby Walnut in Portland, OR
As a family business, work life and personal life are harder to differentiate. That is frustrating at times—like when the next lumber order or drawer slide inventory is part of breakfast conversation. But, from the perspective of the environment and how all our actions affect it, it’s just a more transparent model. Everything is interdependent.
As part of our family’s effort to run our shop and home more sustainably, I am attending Santa Monica’s SustainableWorks Green Living Workshops. There are six classes. The subjects are water, energy, waste, chemicals, transportation, and shopping & food. As homework, they asked the class to take two tests of our environmental footprint. www.myfootprint.org and www.ecofoot.org. Frankly, I was surprised at my eye-opening results. Try it.
The instructor also turned me on to an amazing resource for information graphics. This one is about water.
How is this topic related to woodworking? Remember, interdependent. We build a lot of kitchens and bathrooms, two places Americans consume most of our water, directly, like a bathtub, and indirectly, like eating food. So, this business has only a few degrees of separation from many a drop of water. Plus, it’s always good to know more about what I can do, little changes I can make, in case I have to opportunity to impart some information to a client. Right?
But really, I just like to learn about this stuff. Don’t you?
And it’s a truly informative graphic.
Transparency: How Much Water Do You Use? – Transparency – GOOD.
A poster to show the parents what the children saw
We invited our little boy’s preschool group to see our woodshop. Don’t worry, the machines were all turned off and a team of parents, teachers and our staff were watching everyone’s curious fingers. Seeing raw materials and the process of how things are made is so important for kids. They especially liked the slabs, since it looks more like trees. They had recently worked on sculptures using scrap wood from our shop as well, so it was fun to see where that came from too.
We spoke about the importance of trees and all the things they provide for us. We also touched on problem-solving, working as a team, keeping your shop clean and how much we use math. Cliff claims to have disliked math, but we use it all day long.
So, future woodworkers, respect the forest, work well with others, clean your room and study math.
