Fireplace Mantels, Harvest Table, Antique Wood Flooring, Wood Countertops

18in Pine Plank Table

2009-11-04T22:14:00.004-06:00

A few months ago, we ran into a set of old pine, granary roof board at an auction. As they were stuffed into storage, and it was difficult to see what the board really were. We got lucky and found that several of the boards were 18in wide and 16ft long. What a nice little find.

About the same time, we had a customer looking for to make a nice little table for his house. He wanted something interesting. He was looking for top right around 36" wide.... Well, what do you know but 18 + 18 = 36. Perfect for 2 slabs of this big wood.

We cut up the wood and shipped it, along with some old square nails, from Minneapolis down to Texas. Our customer, Steve was pleased, "The wood came today and it looks great! Thanks for the great cuts and packaging."

I always enjoy seeing regular non-woodworkers "give it a go" and build something. I help wherever I can, sharing insights from my own experience.

Just a few weeks ago, I get the email I was waiting for, "Thanks again for the excellent wood, the table would be terrible if not for the great historic planks." (grin) I don't think it looks terrible at all; I think the table looks very nice. Great job, Steve!

Here's some details on his project-
- Legs from Lowe's. $12.94 each, #3 1x4's at $4.00 each. (skirt)
- Biscuited the joints and reinforced with corner blocks.
- Aluminum roof flashing for the knot patch job.
- The paint is from the Biltmore estate color scheme from Valspar paint.
- 6 or 7 coats of poly after sanding the planks down.

As a side note, much of the narrower material is going to be used for a wonderful old rustic floor. The wider material will be used for tables and other furniture.

Metal Strapped Mantel

2009-10-21T11:47:00.004-05:00

A few months back, I was playing around with integrating old bridge designs with tables. I searched around the net, found lots of great bridge pictures and found a couple of great blacksmiths. Interestingly, rivets, once the mainstay of metal joinery, went out with advent welding. There's only a handful of people in the United States still doing hot metal rivets.

A couple of the blacksmith / rivet guys worth noting are Doug Lockhart of The Makers of Hand Forged Iron in logan Ohio and Steve Howell from Ballard Forge in Seattle, Washington. For old bridge restoration in particular, Vern Mesler has a great site as well -- VJM Metal Craftsman. But, I digress.

As I started to talk with Steve Howell, he showed me some pictures of some metal straps that he had done in the past. They were styled off of the work by Greene and Green Architects (see the Gamble House). When I saw the metal straps, I was thrilled. I instantly knew that these would make wonderful straps for fireplace mantels. I sent over a couple of 5in x 6in x 6ft reclaimed oak beams that had been joined together, sanded, and finished. The oak has a wonderful natural patina.

Steve went to work and added these great straps and triangular pins. They are hand-forged and hand worked. This is the real thing. It's not synthetic, mass produced, run of the mill metal. Each piece has character and texture and Steve's signature. They are a piece of art.

As the pictures of the finished piece came in, I could not have been more excited. This is a stunning mantel. The one is currently available for $800. This is a just great piece of work. By strapping beams together in this fashion, we can come up with some very large mantels. Custom sizes and piece are available.

Stay tuned. I'm looking forward to working with both Steve and Doug in the future. The old wood and the old iron really work well together. There will be more mantel and table collaborations to come!

Countertop Personality

2009-10-03T11:01:00.005-05:00

There was a very nice article produced in the October edition of Midwest Home Magazine entitled "Countertop Confidential." One of our wood countertops is featured on the 5th page of the article, "Case File: Wood with Spark & Tara Schneider, Webster, Minnesota."

The article covered 10 types of countertops including marble, cement, wood, granite, laminate, solid surface, and eco-friendly.

The wood write up was nice and was summarized as, "Gentle, agrarian, history-lover." I'd certainly add that it is eco-friendly. Much more so than many other so-called eco-friendly counters on the market. Many of the recycled countertops include as much as 30% resin (read PLASTIC). Resin is not only not recycled, but it is also not particularly recycle-able. Some of our wood countertops are already on their 3rd or 4th recycling and can easily be recycled into other wood products later.

See the complete article.

Wood Counter - Kitchen

2008-09-28T12:03:00.007-05:00

What a fun project! While the pictures show a bit of construction dust, they're still fun to see. Here's a complete kitchen full of reclaimed wood countertops -- Red Oak to be exact. The wood came from the floor joists and secondary studs from an old log cabin. The log cabin was saved as a log cabin, but we were blessed with the opportunity to re-use the old dimensional lumber. The wood dated back the the 1800s with a wonderful, unique patina. When I first saw this batch, I knew it was going to be special.

This kitchen has classic looking sage green and ivory painted cabinets accented with rich auborn and brown tones of the red oak wood countertops. It's a wonderful kitchen for those who love to cook -- full size stainless steel appliances, several sinks, and a stove water top. It has a nice pass-thru for serving on the eating island. A classic hutch also helps set the tone. We even cut out a special area on one of the countertops so a cutting board and a marble pasty board could be inserted and interchanged.

It's well worth your while to browse the full set of pictures. Of course, our client Abby, is thrilled. Here's a few excerpts from her emails, July 5th, "The last counter arrived several weeks ago and it is beautiful. Thank you....the counters are amazing." Sept 28 (with pictures), "we continue to be grateful to you for the gorgeous work."

I've always said I had a great job. This is why!

Wood Countertop-Wine

2008-07-24T00:08:00.006-05:00

Normally, I patiently wait for photos from our clients of our finished pieces in their home. I couldn't wait on this one. This is a really neat piece. It's a wood countertop, well actually a wood bartop, with a wine barrel stave leading edge. The edge is accented with original square nails from an old granary. The center hosts a wine barrel inlay where you can still see the red wine stains. Finally, an end-grain block rests in the center of it all. The wine barrel staves come from California and the wood came from an old corn crib in Minnesota.

This was a fun, iterative process with our client. (see the picture set to look at some of the mock ups). The initial conversation ended with "something interesting in a 5 foot wide wood counter with an arc peaking at 24 inches and starting at 16 inches on each side." We played with Google SketchUp to mock up many different variations. We played with pickle vat wood, plain old white oak, an inlay here and an inlay there. This is the result. Turns out that the natural bend in the barrel staves was nearly a perfect fit for this 16 to 24 inch arch over 5 feet. What beautiful stroke of luck. An of course, what better way to enjoy a glass of wine than on a neat piece of reclaimed wood like this?

Tablelegs.com

2008-07-04T20:53:00.009-05:00

We do most of our work from end-to-end. We dismantle some buildings, build great custom tables (among everything else), finish them in our shop, and then ship 'em whole to the customer. The other day, we had a customer order a 36 by 77 inch white oak table top that was 1 inch thick. They didn't want the legs, just the top. We got chatting a bit and it turns out that they ordered their base from fellow woodworking company called Classic Designs by Matthew Burak or TableLegs.com

This made a lot of sense to us. Our customers, Debbie and Ron, specifically wanted painted turned legs. It seems silly to paint over great old wood. In addition, it's a pretty challenging to turn old legs and maintain an interesting old look. Some of the absolutely stunning beauty of our reclaimed wood is, as they say, "only skin deep." As you cut into the wood to turn it, you loose the patina, original woodworker marks, and other character that really make it interesting. So why not, purchase a table base from tablelegs.com and then purchase the top from Antique Woodworks.

Antique Woodworks crafted the white oak tabletop from old 2-by-8 floor joists from an old 1880s granary. This particular granary has provided a lot of splendid wood for many of our furniture projects lately. Anyway, we removed what square nails we could, then straightlined and planed the boards to just the right size -- dinging our share of blades in the the process. But such is the game with the old wood. With just the right amount of sanding, the beautiful color, nice tight grains, and character all come to life beautifully. Finally, we finished the top with a coat of Rubio Monocoat.

Debbie and Ron worked carefully to create distressed, antiqued finish for their tablelegs.com table base. Then, ordered a completed white oak table top from us. They picked up the top and then assembled the whole thing together. It was a nice do-it-yourself project with great results. They did a really nice job. With a set of pictures from the Debbie, we also got the feedback we so love to hear, "It turned out just like we thought it wood. We love it. Thanks so much for being patient with us through the process of making decisions."

Visit the Farm Tables section or the Wood Countertops section of this site for more info.

Three Tables

2008-04-20T11:44:00.006-05:00

A conference room table, a side table, and a farm table all made from reclaimed wood from a barn, a log cabin, and a granary. It's amazing what this old wood has to say when put the right hands. A more complete set of pictures is posted in this photo album.

The first is a white oak farm table that has now found a new home in Wisconsin. The legs are from the first row of timbers from an old log cabin. They were hand-hewn on 2 sides and rounded, hewn-pealed on the other two sides. The end-grain of the legs comes through the table top, while the bolts to the supports are capped over with original log cabin pegs. The legs are accented with an old rusty iron silo bands. The triangular feet were designed to go along with the many other triangles on the bench and fireplace mantel. The tabletop itself was made from old floor joists from a granary. The joists had been planed and sanded just enough to make things smooth, but also give nice color. And the client says.... "Perfect! Heavy enough too - sheesh!" (yes, it probably was near 400 pounds.)

The second table is quite a departure from our typical tables -- much more formal, much more refined. That comes with good reason. This Rock Elm table was created by a highly skilled woodworker -- Randy Griffin from Greenfield, Indiana which is just outside Indianapolis. Going on it's 3rd life, it's hard to imagine that this wood started out it's second as a gray old log cabin. Randy says, "The end grain is really stunning, and I designed that in where I could... I would like to use the rock elm again... it is beautiful." The clean light colored straight grains on the surface accented with a more plain sawn stretcher. Things worked out beautifully with this one.

Finally, we come to one of my favorite tables. This four-by-nine foot conference room table with a farm style flair has a wonderful old white oak plank top accented with a original bolts and unique, exposed end-grain pedestals. Each pedestal was created by combining four 7x7 beams together into a single post. This created a much more massive scale and let us create this great end-grain panel on the tabletop. The individual beams were heavily sanded so that they would blend nicely with one another, yet retain some circle saw marks and some original flowing shape from the tree. The posts demonstrate the great variance colors that come naturally on the old white oak. And here's what the client says, "I love the table! It is exactly what I envisioned and what I wanted.It was a challenge getting it off the delivery truck but we did it.... Thanks for creating such a beautiful piece." More information on this table is available in the farm tables section of the site.

Wood Countertop - Oak

2008-04-06T20:49:00.012-05:00

More pictures from clients. This one comes from a client near Chicago, Illinois. It's a wood countertop, or bar top, made from reclaimed white oak. It features a "live" edge full of character. The edge is particularly nice because it has lots of worm trails on it as well the irregular edge line. The top surface is what we'd consider more conservative in that it's a pretty clean interior cut from a beam. The top is a great accent to the faux stone bar sides.

This picture shows how this countertop started it's life. This little stick was about 18 feet long, 13 inches wide, and 6 inches thick. The first half of this old granary sill beam had already been used on another table top. We slab this piece out about 3 times more and off to the kiln it went After being in the kiln, we began to saw, plane, and glue pieces together. We made the countertop as one long piece originally. It was eventually cut and glued to create the 45 degree turn.

Finally, the sanding started. We sanded and sanded some more. We filled some holes with epoxy and sanded even more. After quite a bit of sanding, we finally arrived at something like the picture below.

After the sanding was complete, we applied 5 coats of Waterlox Tung Oil and we were ready to ship. If you're interested, there's several more pictures to browse. For other countertops, take a look at the wood countertops section of the website.

A Floor with Patina

2008-03-12T21:27:00.012-05:00

We get the question fairly regularly, "What is patina?" Patina is the word for the great colors on the surface of the wood (and metal for that matter) that develop over time. There's generally not a lot of ways to fake it well. It's something real that develops over time. It’s a warming of the wood. It's a deepening of color. Sometimes, it's a weathering to gray.

White oak and sometimes red oak are amongst the woods the react most favorably over time. Here's a rustic white oak floor that's all about patina. This floor was from original floor joists from a barn in Olivia, Minnesota. The only finish applied to this floor was Waterlox brand tung oil. There's no stain. It's good old patina applied by Mother Nature.

The original 2-by-8 material was removed from the barn floor joists – full of nails and warped like a boomerangs. As we brought it to the shop, many people (more than usual) said, "what the heck are you going to do with that garbage." "We're going to make a floor… just wait and see," I replied. So, we pulled nails, drilled nails, and otherwise tore the old square nails out. We split the wood into planks then we cut new straight edges. The pieces got a bit narrower and a bit shorter as the warping was removed. Finally, we ran it through our moulder to give us a nice straight edges, a flat back, and a lightly touched surface.

When we installed the floor, we sanded the corners on-site so that we’d have a hand-worked look, not a perfect machine edge. The floor was glued as well as face-nailed with square nails from the Tremont Nail Company.

So here's the result – a great floor that is the highlight of this old farmhouse remodel. The client was thrilled. She said, "this remodel wouldn't be the same without the floor. It absolutely makes the whole thing." Go ahead an browse the pictures of this project or take a look at the other antique wood flooring options that we have available.

Barnwood Floor

2008-02-14T23:23:00.004-06:00

Spectacular. That's how I'd describe this Minnesota sun room. It's always nice to receive pictures from our clients. This room has a great floor made of old barnwood siding with the red paint side up. It was carefully hand sanded prior to install -- removing the gray, leaving a bit of color, and pushing into the natural wood tones. An oil based polyurethane was applied to deepen the color and provide a protecting finish. The room also hosts reclaimed pine trim. Browse through the pictures; they are a real treat.

Valentines

2008-02-11T22:35:00.001-06:00

Ah yes. It's Valentine's Week - the week of love and romance. In our barn endeavors, we seem to run into a few moments of shared love. A fortuitous heart shaped knot lends itself to the penknife etchings of Lance loves Robin. A moment in time preserved in wood. As it turns out, the current barn owner ran into a woman named Robin at the local watering hole. They got talking about various things and the love note came up in random conversation. Sure enough, the person named Robin at the bar and the name of Robin scratched on the barn wall were one in the same. When the Fountain City, Wisconsin barn was dismantled, the board was given to Robin as a keepsake of an old love.

In all of these old barns, we find the touch of an old craftsmen hewn and cut into each of the great beams over a century ago. In this old barn, we found the touch of a lover, two entwined hearts – AA and LD – carved into the wall 84 years ago in 1924. While the couple has past on, the touch of the knife to old wood remains a ghost of the love they shared.

Next, we have the story of an old farmhouse. As the old house was dismantled to make way for a new development, we removed the old floors and woodwork. Sealed in and hidden forever between the ceiling below and the floor above was a small metal lock box. Of course, our imaginations dreamed up contents of old stock certificates, paper dollars, and gold coins. The real contents, perhaps more valuable, turned out to be letters from Rita in St. Paul, Minnesota to Cyril in Cologne, Minnesota. The exchange of letters lasted 13 months from June of 1941 to July of 1942. The tone of the letters started as friends but later became romantic. Eventually, the couple was married in May of 1946. As fortune would have it, rather than riches, we got a chance peek at a growing love inside of a lockbox.

Finally, while not a love note, perhaps it is more. Buried inside the foundation of huge split granite field stones and cement was a Prince Albert Tobacco tin. We opened up the tin to find a prayer card inside. “God bless this home and bring us health and happiness.” In the end, isn’t that what all the romance is about?

Octagonal Barn

2008-01-30T13:21:00.001-06:00

What a great old barn for sale! This little gem is an 1881 Italianate 3-story, Octogon Bank Barn located in Hudson, OH. It boasts about 8500 square feet over 3 floors. As currently finished, the floors are 2760 SF, 2964SF, and 2804SF. Each side of the octagon is 24 feet; making the basic footprint 58 feet by 58 feet.

The octagon barn was built by dairy farms Hial and Milton C. Danforth in 1881. The Danforth family was from Vermont where dairy farming was prevalent. Most farmers in the area were dairy oriented. Thee were many cheese factories in the region.

The barn was ingeniously designed to simultaneously feed all the Danforth cattle at one time. The hay was pitched from the mow thru the center hole in the barn to the ground floor where the cattle had gathered to feed.

Hial was 73 (37?) when the barn was built; Milton was 45. The tax value of the barn was listed at $800, in 1881 and was further listed under Hial’s vast real estate holdings. The local atlas of 1910 pictures a house, the octagonal barn, and several other out buildings.

The foundation of the bar is tooled sandstone. The siding was originally board and baton and was vertically hung. Termites had done considerable damage to the siding. It was inspected, treated and re-used within the building during a renovation in 1976. Much of the original siding is found in the building’s foyer. The 2 inch poplar flooring in the foyer is also original. In addition, the interior staircase was fashioned of the poplar flooring. The structure is reportedly from local hardwoods – Hickory, Beech, and Oak.

New brown stained board and baton siding covers the exterior. During the renovation, the 8 sided cupola’s wooden louvers were replaced wth glass paneled sides

The barn was completely remodeled by Don Reisig in 1976. Allan Sveda was the architect. The barn was turned into an office building with three floors of usable space. It contained conference rooms along with kitchens and bathrooms and house the office of the Smithers’ Oasis Company, which makes water-holding floral foam. The former root cellar with its foot thick stone walls contained a vault.The barn has been put to many uses thru the years. It formerly served as boat storage, an antique auction house and a meeting place for Civil Air Patro in World War II. Prior to renovation in 1976, the barn’s only tenants were pigeons. It currently needs to be moved to allow residential growth in the area. More pictures available. More info can be found on the listing on our site. Make an offer, this place will not last long!

4x11 Oak Farm Table

2008-01-17T23:25:00.002-06:00

What a thing of beauty! A 4-foot by 11-foot white oak harvest table. This one will seat about 14 people comfortably at your next holiday party. (This table is heavy enough, those 14 people could probably dance on it too).

For the tabletop, we started out with 12x12x23 foot hand hewn white oak beams from an old 1800s vintage granary in Glencoe, Minnesota. Yes, 12x12x23. These beams were less than perfect -- rounded edges, some heavily rotten faces, tapering, and other challenges. We skinned the beams to get 2.5" thick boards with the best patina. Then, we then slowly planned each board about a half-a-dozen times to get just the right look -- functionally smooth, but with shadows of old hand hewn marks, cracks, and bug trails. You'll notice the "live" edges with the rounding and knots that were once just under the bark of the tree.

The base is made from rafter beams from an old log barn in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. They turned out to be just the right size to balance out the massive table top. Original hand hewn marks were sanded down a great deal, but left in tact for the added character.

Go ahead and browse through the complete set of pictures. (including ones in a messy finishing booth and more original granary pics). Note, the pictures were taken while the table was still on the cart to move this 500 pounder around!

Reclaimed Pine Floor

2008-01-09T14:04:00.002-06:00

What a great project! Back in September, a gentleman and hobbyist woodworker came to our shop to mill some reclaimed wood into flooring. After pulling the old white pine from the kiln, we went pretty much ran full circle together - denailing a bit, ripping the wood straight, and the putting it through our molder. We cut the surface just right so that the old patina looked great. He enjoyed the Saturday in the shop and went off on his merry way to install.

About a month later, I get an email with some pictures --

The flooring went down perfectly and after five coats of Waterlox Tung Oil, I finally finished the project and was able to place some of the furniture back into the porch. We think the floor looks just terrific!

Thanks again for all your help in making this project so special. I think its great that we have been able to incorporate such a special floor and we know exactly where the wood came from. Having the chance to help you mill the wood was an extra bonus. Lots of our friends that have been watching me complete the porch agree that it has been a neat project.

The wood we reclaimed that day was from an 1870's transitional timberframe-stick frame house in Norwood, Minnesota. It was in built by phenomenal craftsmen who mortised-and-tenon’ed everything -- even the studs. There were very few nails where today the guys would have gotten carried away with their air nailers. The place was a straight as could be. While we wanted to save this building as a whole, we couldn’t find a buyer in time. The reclaimed pine floor that we crafted was from the outside shiplap sheathing that had developed a great color over time. Stay tuned for more information on about this old house.

Scarf Joint Mantel

2008-01-03T01:57:00.002-06:00

We just cut out a 7 foot section out of a 6x8 white oak beam today. The beam was incredibly tight white oak with great patina, but I digress. The section was scarf joint. When the old barn builders needed and extra long span of wood (something more than 20 feet), they would often join two pieces of wood together with angled cuts and sometimes some iron work to create a scarf joint.

There are actually many different variations of scarf joints and it's fun to look at how different builders worked. This one used metal bands of sorts. These were original hand forged pieces. Some guys will just use bolts and big washers. Others will use a wood peg to tighten the joint.

Take a look at this potential fireplace mantel to get a better look at these pictures. As we run across a few others, I'll be sure to get pictures and post here.

Waconia Log Granary

2007-12-31T12:22:00.003-06:00

While it's all tinned up on the outside, take a peak on the inside and you'll see why we're excited. It's an 18x26 log building is made of full-span hand-hewn yellow elm.

There's logs in the place that are 7"x18" and 26 feet long. This is another building in the Waconia, Minnesota area that was settled around the 1870 to 1900 timeframe. The best part about this buildings is that it is very well preserved and has just a window and a door cut-out on the first floor.

Of course, we're looking for a good home for this building. It's well priced and would make a lovely addition to a B-and-B, hunting land, or lake place.

Get more details in our log cabin section of this site.

Welcome to Our Blog

2007-12-31T01:35:00.002-06:00

Blogging; Blogging; Everybody's Blooging.

Well, I guess it's our turn as well. New year; new things. For a guy who started his career and spent 15 years in technology, you'd think I'd be more on top of this. Nevertheless, it's finally here.

I'm pretty excited. We've got lots of things to show you! I talk with lots of people that say, "What a neat job -- you're recycling, being creative, and building things that last." I agree. We're very fortunate. We'd like to share some of that discovery, excitement, and fun.

On this blog, you can expect to see old log cabins and barns that we've recently visited and photographed; wonderful antique floors that we've created from this old reclaimed wood; as well as furniture and mantels pieces that we've recently designed and crafted. We'll also share information about interesting wood batches as we come across them. We find little batches here and there such as: brewery vat oak; pickle vat Doug Fir; 12-16" wide plank circle sawn red oak with great patina, and more.

On the technical side, I'd encourage you to link this blog up to myYahoo or your favorite RSS browser. You'll get a small snippet of news everytime we post new content. (I'd hope that I can add a little bit every week). It will look similar to the image below. It's unobtrusive and there inviting you when you have a little time to browse.

If you use myYahoo, I think you can click on this link:
Add to MyYahoo!

Otherwise, you should be able to add:
http://antiquewoodworks.com/blog/atom.xml or
http://antiquewoodworks.com/blog/rss.xml

Of course, you can always visit:
http://antiquewoodworks.com/blog/blog.html

Reclaimed Wood Tables

2007-05-03T01:25:00.001-05:00

There's just something about these tables that drives the impulse to touch and feel. If you see it; you'll want to touch it. (kinda like at the museum, but here you can get away with it.) I'm not sure if it's the genuine authenticity, the history, or just the look, but none-the-less, it draws people in. The one shown was made from hand hewn beams from an 1870's Wisconsin log cabin. It's a great piece. Check 'em out on the website for more information. We have several varieties in the works.

Church Steeple

2007-05-02T01:21:00.001-05:00

The steeple on the Courtland, Minnesota church is looking for a good home. It was built in the late 1800's, it's bigger than it looks at about 60 feet tall from the roof. The bell will be placed in the new church, but the steeple remains. The intention is to remove this structure in two parts. Imagine this on the corner of your house!The church itself is a "stick-frame" pine construction with square nails. It was remodeled in the 1960's -- replacing some of the big beams with modern glue-lams. The rest of the church is also available for salvage if anyone is interested.

Old Wood Pics

2007-05-01T01:30:00.001-05:00