How we got into the antique wood business.
I was 20 years old and people started calling us asking for reclaimed antique wood. I had been involved with my Mom and Dad's business since I was a kid and my job up to that point was seeking out saw mills that would consider cutting new timber the way we wanted in order to recreate the look of old floors. At the time, our business was called Carlisle Restoration Lumber and we supplied wide boards mainly in the New England region to replace or repair existing floors in old homes. Our newly sawn boards were made to look 200 years old with surface treatments — saw kerfs, hand scraping, etc. — which were used in conjunction with the custom stains Dad had developed.
We had built a pretty good reputation as being the people to go to when you wanted that authentic, historic look. And though I was young, I had slowly managed to develop a strong trust among designers, builders and homeowners. So when they starting asking me for reclaimed antique wood for new construction and remodeling projects, I knew that if I could provide it, we’d have a whole new market and could expand our business while at the same time preserving something really important.
So my journey began. At first, I ran an ad looking for anyone who had an old building who would consider selling some of the wood. The first person who responded — I'll never forget this — was a nice lady who was an artist. She said she had an old barn that had caved in and wanted me to look at it and take what I thought I could use. I took a friend with me and off we went in my pickup truck with a chain saw. We arrived at the home early in the morning and started looking at the barn and realized we were in for an interesting day. It was a dilapidated mess and it appeared that trying to save anything from it would be a waste of time. We spent the entire day rolling over beams and trying to find good pieces of structural timber that might be salvageable.
Finally we headed home, exhausted, with a few beams and boards. It made us realize that if we were going into this business, we would need to find others who would do the dismantling and deliver the reclaimed material to us. The arduous process of taking the building apart and rough cutting the material to be reclaimed was another business in itself. We wanted to focus on the finishing end.
So the next thing we did was buy a load of old wood sight unseen from someone who had salvaged it. When it showed up, we were disappointed (to say the least) by its condition. But having had the prior experience, we realized what the guy had been up against and were a bit more forgiving. Still, most of it was unusable.
Then we began encountering other daunting obstacles in bringing old wood to a point where we could proudly offer it to someone for a new floor. We had to figure out how to kill the bugs still living in it, how to get all the nails and other hidden hardware out of it before we tried to cut it, how to dry it, etc. And as we went about the processing and milling, we were often stunned by how much waste there was and how little we would end up with for all our efforts. So we set about finding people who were really close to the wood, could see the intrinsic beauty and charm in certain pieces, weigh the usability and be selective in what they took. Easier said than done. But we kept at it and gradually learned who we could trust to provide us with really good boards and beams. Many of those people today have become part of our extended family.
Over the years, we’ve further developed and refined all of our procuring and processing practices and are able to provide customers with a good steady stream of reclaimed antique wood from various historic structures which have been slated for demolition. In fact, the quality and service we offer has made Carlisle the largest supplier of antique wood in North America, and we’re proud to have been nationally recognized by The Forest Stewardship Council for the green methods we use to responsibly reclaim and recycle every piece. We maintain a complete chain of custody from the moment we dismantle a building to the day the finished floor is shipped to the customer.
As we strive to preserve this wonderful commodity, the hardest part is to get the average person to understand just how much of this is a truly a labor of love — one that preserves a treasured natural resource. In a way, it’s no different than appreciating rare gemstones which only time can create. I continue to feel that it’s our job to educate folks as to how unique and historically important this wood really is — and to make them just as passionate about it as we are. That’s one reason why we give customers a commemorative folio, handmade in Vermont, with an inscription that notes the location and history the structure, a botanical illustration of the species of wood and the names of the floor owners who have given the wood a much-deserved second life cycle.
I can look at one of our antique wood floors and each crack, nail hole, worm hole, water mark and saw kerf will tell me the wood’s life story. Not everyone is interested in that and would rather have something new and less expensive and that’s fine, too. But those who are interested — those who truly “get it” and realize the amount of care and effort that went into every step of recycling this rare, historic wood — don’t ask “How can it be so expensive?” but rather, “How can it be so reasonable?”
Author's Name: Don Carlisle
Posted Date: July 3, 2008 at 12:11 PM
Filed under: Don Carlisle
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