It had arrived at the landfill to be buried. Eighty years old. Cut from a massive tree, now reduced to a dozen inches. Unless that beam had the luck to be selected by someone who knew better. ‘Reclaimed’, thanks to the efforts of people who had a plan. Plans aside, it takes a lot of luck to end up as ‘reclaimed‘ rather than ‘recycled’ or worse. Over the course of four months, the beam was cleaned, prepared, and moved to a new home where it would serve a new function.
It seems impossible that there could be so many chances to save our materials. Millions of tons of waste are dumped each year, including pieces of lumber in that mix. How many are removed and put to another use? Perhaps consider reclaimed materials for your next project. For Builders in Cheltenham, contact https://glynmannconstruction.co.uk/builders-near-me/builders-in-cheltenham
Architects would have us believe that the reason we see ‘salvaged’ used in place of ‘new’ is because it is a more honest way to describe the materials used in the renovation. A renovation that requires the careful removal of hundreds of nails, the disentanglement of hundreds of boards by species and condition, the sanding and measuring of many tons of wood to fit new demands and the reuse of something that has borne its load for more than eight decades without major damage, rot, or failure.
Go back and look again at that beam. You can still see the grooves of the saw blade that removed it from its forest home in the 1940s.