Timber!
Posted on December 18th, 2007 – 3:31 PMBy Jason Hammond
In the midst of all the madness (of racing to complete our house) I find myself failing to stop and take in the really cool things that are happening. So Monday when I received these images from Eastvold Custom Woodwork of my reclaimed timber breakfast bar being cut down to size It was a wonderful little moment.
The original timber piece was just a bit over 26ft in length 4 inches think and 18 inches wide. The final bar will be 15ft in length and roughly the same thickness and width, with a 3 foot tall section that runs from the floor up to support the end of the bar making an “L” shape. The pieces had been picked up from the Duluth Timber Company roughly a month ago where they had salvaged it from a 1940’s Boeing Aircraft hanger in a little town just outside of Seattle called Maple Valley, Washington. However little had been done with the piece since then as cutting a piece of wood like this requires a special blade and the crew at Eastvold had been waiting for it to arrive before the cut into the monstrous piece of timber. It was crucial that we get a perfect cut as we had planned to run the grain of the piece down the length of the bar and have it perfectly align with the vertical piece that would act as the leg of “L” shape.
Although it was our request (in particular Stacy’s) that we have a long continuous bar on the one side of our kitchen I don’t think that either of us truly grasped how truly remarkable in size such a piece would be. However seeing the the photos of the entire Eastvold crew working together to execute a single cut, on this truly stunning piece of wood, quickly gave us an understanding — and we liked it.
The whole crew from Eastvold gets involved in the cut.
Getting ready to make the precise miter cut.
A great close up of the timber.
a perfect cross section.
Perfect imperfection.
8 Responses to "Timber!"
Just gorgeous!
Hey Jason-
Every post…an new amazing new detail of your very cool house.
chris
Beautiful! Wow. Great close-ups! Can’t wait to see that gorgeous piece of wood installed. So great that you used reclaimed wood instead of virgin.
Beautiful. Did I miss what kind of wood it is?
trudy,
I didn’t mention it on this entry but did in the previous one that it was Douglas Fir.
Jason
I love Doug fir. The bedrooms and (I discovered when vinyl was removed just before I moved out) the bathroom in my 1920s bungalow in Calif. had Doug fir floors. But, it seems to be a little soft. There were various indentations from before I bought the house. Maybe the previous residents had heavy furniture on it, I dunno. Mine had a great dark color.
Beautiful! You just don’t see wood of that quality anymore. It will be a great focal point in the kitchen living area. You’ve done a great job hunting out your materials.
Very beautiful — all of it!
Yes, Fir is a bit softer and you need to be careful with it, especially as a flooring. Lived in a house with it and made sure that all heavy furniture was well padded and used small rubber mats under the bed legs to keep (we hoped) from creating an indentation. Didn’t mind doing it though as it was just beautiful.
