Worn down, ravaged by the elements or afflicted by disease — but worth salvaging. There is an afterlife for damaged or unwanted trees and old wooden buildings beyond the scrap heap.
The recent Interior Design Show showcased companies that specialize in crafting new furniture and woodworking pieces from salvaged materials.
In the Toronto area alone, about 9,000 municipal trees are removed each year because they have reached maturity, been infested by insects or disease, or to make way for development.
Urban Tree Salvage uses such trees as base materials to create one-of-a-kind pieces ranging from dining and console tables to beds, cabinetry and vanities.
“Our goal is every tree that we salvage from the urban core will potentially save a tree coming down from the natural forest,” said Melissa Neist, sales and marketing manager for Urban Tree Salvage.
“If we can kind of shift the mindframe of individuals away from, ‘Well, let’s go clear-cut a forest,’ well, why do that when there’s already trees having to come down because of urban development, insects, disease,” she added. “They’re coming down, why not use them? It just makes sense.”
Neist said the company also provides raw materials to contractors, designers and architects, as well as to the public.
“It’s like a relationship they can build with the piece because you never know — it could be right down the street from you, it could be a park down the road,” she said. “Knowing that it’s local, it gives them a good feeling.”
Yuill McGregor likely never imagined when he was taking down a fertilizer plant for a friend in Bradford, Ont., some 20 years ago that it would mark his first foray into the antique wood business.
“When I took it down, I came across these monster timbers and they just looked like big old hunks of dirty wood and I thought , ‘Well, at the minimum, you can make a bridge out of these darn things,’” he said. “It wasn’t until I was cutting one with a chainsaw and I was like, ‘Geez, these things are hard, and they’re interesting looking wood.”
As founder of Northonsixty, the use of salvaged woods is among the central planks of his business.
All of the company’s water-recovered and recycled woods have been sourced within 300 kilometres of their shop in Dwight, Ont.
Family tree of your furniture
If the company knows the specific origin of a tree in one of its products, it will let customers know. But the city arborist initially stockpiles many of them at a site, so it’s usually impossible to track a specific location beyond establishing its roots were in Toronto.
