We're all for re-using, re-claiming, re-purposing and recycling. We have a great client who has been renovating her 19th century Brooklyn home for over a year now. She first came to us for a live edge Walnut slab headboard with built-in side tables. While working on her headboard, she asked us about flooring. Her idea was to use salvaged white pine sub-flooring from the house as main flooring and supplement with other white pine boards where needed. Sounded great to us and we had just the white pine to mill for her, our old growth white pine from Second Avenue (see reclaimed wood page for background info). The white pine, like so many Manhattanites, was about to make the exodus to Brooklyn.

Sometimes good ideas need a little tweaking, a bit of creativity. Turns out that the usable amount of sub flooring was less than originally thought and it was too thin. Not too thin for sub flooring but too thin for main flooring that would see a lot of foot traffic. We offered to mill as much of our Second Avenue pine as needed and we'd take the sub flooring. A workable idea for all of us.

The sub flooring sat in our workshop for weeks, all 101 boards. They sat on dollies in a corner of the shop looking a little worse for wear until we ran them through the planer, but we knew we'd have an opportunity to use them.

Enter one slick, fast-talking midtown Manhattan gym owner with a short lead-time, and budget- challenging reno project. One of the things he wanted was reclaimed wood wall paneling. And we had just the right stuff. So we cleaned those boards up, white and gray washed some and left others unstained and got to work. If we do say so ourselves, the subflooring which turned into wall paneling looks pretty great.

Meanwhile, we were able to provide our Brooklyn homeowner with beautiful period flooring that just needed some TLC. In our book, the results are beautiful all around.

So whether you need custom paneling or flooring, give us call. We may even feature your project on our blog.