Reclaimed Wood News

Green Building Materials and More

Reclaimed Wood from the Pit

August 20th, 2010

Greetings!

10"X10"X18' Douglas Fir "Pit Wood"

10″X10″X18′ Douglas Fir “Pit Wood”

Our company keeps growing and improving! Last month Pacific Northwest Timbers, our new yard in Port Townsend, Washington, was officially certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Crossroads has always provided reclaimed lumber as an eco-friendly building material and plans to soon be FSC certified.  For Pacific Northwest Timbers, FSC Chain of Custody Certification is a verification that our post-consumer and post-industrial products help to protect the world’s forests.  We are proud to be a part of this organization that encourages responsible forest management.  You can learn more about the Forest Stewardship Council at www.fsc.org.

This month we’re featuring wood from a unique source. We have been affectionately calling the material “Pit Wood,” because it is being excavated from a mud pit 80 feet wide and 1,400 feet long! This Redwood and Douglas Fir was a wooden platform at a cattle feed plant built in the 1930’s.

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Antique Genuine and Recreated Barn Siding

April 21st, 2010
Genuine Old Barn Siding on a Wyoming Guest Ranch

Genuine Old Barn Siding on a Wyoming Guest Ranch

We have great news to share with you! We’ve opened a yard in Washington state! Pacific Northwest Timbers, LLC, the newborn sister company to Crossroads Recycled Lumber, LLC, is up and running at 130 Seton Road in Port Townsend, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. Click Here for Seattle Area Reclaimed Wood.

 

The new yard has a sawmill and edger in place as well as moulding capability. You can reach Pacific Northwest Timbers at (360) 379-2792 for an appointment, or contact the Crossroads yard in Central California at the information at the bottom of this e-mail. Before visiting either yard please call for an appointment to be sure that we’ll be able to accommodate you. We look forward to meeting your reclaimed lumber needs in the Northwest!

 

Now that the news is out about our new yard, we’d love to tell you about one of our reclaimed specialties: Barn Siding. Old Barn Siding is one of the most popular reclaimed products for folks trying to foster a rustic character in their building. Barn Siding can vary greatly in species, color, and quality.

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December is upon us!

December 15th, 2009

We sure are keeping busy here at Crossroads Recycled Lumber. The details of our new yard, Pacific Northwest Timbers, are developing, and Marc & family will be spending the month of January up in Port Townsend house-sitting and getting the new office in order. All very exciting!

Last week we had a quick and hard snow. Monday through Wednesday I couldn’t make it up the hill to work and got a few snowdays for a break. Thursday I was pleased to make some connections at the San Joaquin Valley Regional Green Jobs Summit held in Fresno and put on by the Latino Environmental Advocacy Program. The event was very well attended by people of diverse ages and backgrounds. I was very happy to see an event of this calibur in our own community. For more info read here: http://sjvleap.wordpress.com/

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Beautiful Reclaimed Western Yellow Pine

November 29th, 2009
Wire-Brushed 1X6 Ponderosa Pine Ship-Lap

Wire-Brushed 1X6 Ponderosa Pine Ship-Lap

The Summer of 2009 has treated us well here at Crossroads Recycled Lumber. With our planer-matcher up and running Crossroads can now mill our own tongue and groove, ship-lap, paneling patterns, as well as surface 8″X16″ timbers, all with the same machine. We’re very excited about this addition that greatly increases Crossroads’ capabilities!

In our inaugural Crossroads Newsletter this month, we’d like to share with you a bit about our Western Yellow Pine (also called “Knotty Pine”) out of Tracy, California. Western Yellow Pine is not to be confused with Southern Yellow Pine, which is a much harder, denser East Coast wood.

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Opening a New Yard! Washington Location!

November 25th, 2009

Hello valued customers and friends! I’m writing today with exciting news! We are about to open Crossroads new sister company; Pacific Northwest Timbers in Port Townsend, Washington! The new yard will be on Seton Road in Port Townsend, right down the road from Edensaw Woods. More news to come on this later, the business paperwork has just been submitted.

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Coming Soon…NEWSLETTER!

October 13th, 2009

Crossroads’ first-ever Newsletter is about to be launched!  I’ve been working on this baby for around a month now, trying to get all the details just right.  Looking at other examples of newsletters, Crossroads’ is going to be a little different.  Many newsletters I see are full of different articles on various topics.  But Crossroads’ is going to be simple, with the basic goal of reminding our subscribers about what we do and letting them know what’s in our VAST inventory, by featuring a different product or process each month or so.

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Reclaimed Lumber vs. FSC Certified

September 14th, 2009

A California architect wrote to us asking how “the cost of recycled lumber compares to [Forest Stewardship Council] certified lumber.” Below is Marc’s answer.

Generally reclaimed costs more than conventional and FSC lumber primarily because of the labor involved in the recycling process. This includes:

  1. Saving the lumber from demolition/construction projects
  2. Cleaning the lumber (it can be full of nails and other objects like hangers, electrical conduit, tar paper etc, all of which needs to be cleaned and sorted)
  3. Remilling the boards and any finishing required

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Growing Up with Reclaimed Lumber

July 23rd, 2009
Sophie in 2008

Sophie in 2008

Here I am back home in the Valley (well, the foothills) after 5 exciting years in Santa Cruz and Chile. At 23 I’m living with my mom and working for my dad, but I dig it.

My job right now is doing outreach for my dad’s business, Crossroads Recycled Lumber in North Fork, California.  I’m supposed to get our name out there and let architects and institutions that are building green know primarily about reclaimed lumber, and secondarily about Crossroads. I really enjoy doing this. I spend mornings pulling nails or milling boards with the guys in the yard, and afternoons here in the office doing outreach and making connections.

My dad’s been doing the Recycled Lumber thing for years now, since before I was born. When I was a kid he worked different jobs throughout the year, logging in the summer, construction or demolition in the winter. When he worked demolition he would salvage lumber, doors, windows, whatever was salvageable from wrecking jobs. The house I grew up in, that he built with help from friends and neighbors, was nearly 100% reclaimed. Even my first pets were salvaged when Dad was on a demolition job and the two cats (Ishi and Mr. Brown) that had belonged to the abandoned building were left homeless. Crossroads took off when I was about 7, after Dad finally bought a sawmill and could do custom milling instead of just selling pieces “as is.”

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Sustainable Forestry

May 18th, 2009

A rambling rant regarding “Sustainable Forestry?”

We need ten times the old growth stands we presently have because big forests are carbon sinks, taking carbon dioxide and producing oxygen and of course we are blowing carbon in the air at a deadly pace.  Forests in the Western U.S.  are suffering.  Insects, fires, air pollution are killing portions of our forests.  When houses burn up in an area that hasn’t been made firesafe, its the same as having the trees that were harvested wasted as far as lost resources.

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Demolition

May 18th, 2009

For years the norm was to crush and landfill, or to burn the wood from a building, or the whole building. Even now, if a building is scheduled for demolition or even for deconstruction, Crossroads feels it is wasteful to do away with a well built structure in good condition. we have seen tremendous structures in excellent condition, taken down to make room for a big box store or parking lot. This is an insult to the resources that were used to build the building, and the people that planned, designed, and built the structure.

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