Recycling Materials

Renovating our house has taught me how much I enjoy recycling materials that other folks would likely toss in a dumpster. I think I first discovered this trait when I tore out the wall that once separated the living and dining rooms — and ended up with a pile of clear VG fir 2x4s. Not wanting to take them to the dump, I pulled all the nails and let the pile sit in the living room for a few months.

I’ve since used up that pile of 2x4s, but not on any framing projects. Fir is too expensive and too hard to come by for me to justify using it behind sheetrock. I turned that original stack of wood into a chair, and into the racking for our wine cellar.

Another source of lumber provided by the house has been some old fir posts from the basement. Soon after I moved in I discovered that a number of these had completely rotted out at the bottom — I immediately replaced them since the house was apparently levitating.

And that yielded a small stack of 6x6 fir timbers. One of them is currently in our living room: