Architectural salvage brings past to life in today's homes

BARNESVILLE - Customers stroll through centuries of antiques and architectural salvage at Childs Millwork, where builders, decorators and homeowners aren&#39;t stuck with the mass-produced selection of home improvement stores. <br> <br> A pair of lions, hand-carved from French bluestone in the 1920s, turn their backs on rows of 18th-century English ceramic chimney pots - just like the ones being installed at the new home of Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli. <br> <br> On a small grass-covered rise nearby, zinc-covered dormer windows salvaged from a French castle lean up against a warehouse where 300-year-old timbers, stacked ceiling high, await their transformation into hardwood flooring, paneling and furniture. <br> <br> Owner Wyatt Childs, who takes buying trips to Europe about once a month, also offers plenty of treasures found closer to home - including millstones and 25-foot heart pine posts salvaged from Georgia mills. <br> <br> In a time when the same windows, doors and flooring can be found in homes from Malibu to Manhattan, many homeowners come to this lot 50 miles south of Atlanta looking for something different. Between the Barnesville location, an Atlanta storefront and another location in New York City called Cornerstone Salvage, Childs does from $3 million to $5 million in business a year. <br> <br> Childs says all the treasures he&#39;s found share the same irresistible elements: beauty, uniqueness and, most importantly, a solid past. <br> <br> ``Think about a world where everything was an original, where everything had been made by somebody and you can see something of the character of the maker in the object,&#39;&#39; he said. ``We don&#39;t live in that kind of a world anymore.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> A large part of Child&#39;s business is recovered building materials timbers, bricks, stones and tiles. Although such recycled materials once appealed mostly to thrifty types, they now often top the shopping lists of people who arrive in Barnesville aboard private planes. <br> <br> Lauren Hutton, Robert Redford and Broadway producer Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, all have hardwood floors made of antique heart pine timbers bought from Childs. <br> <br> Salvage isn&#39;t new, but it&#39;s growing. <br> <br> ``People have been in the salvage business since the days of Jesus Christ probably,&#39;&#39; said Robert Smith, general manager of Authentic Pine Floor, in Locust Grove. ``But the flooring industry has seen the old wood market really emerge lately. A beam that was worth two dollars 100 years ago is going for $1,000 today.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Smith said his company does about 10 percent of its business in recovered wood, which he says comes from salvaged timbers or logs dredged up from river bottoms where they sank a hundred years or more ago on their way to downstream lumber mills. <br> <br> Louisiana rivers are a particularly rich source of the so-called sinker logs, which Smith said have a characteristic greenish gray tint and an ``indescribably musty old smell&#39;&#39; that mercifully fades shortly after milling. <br> <br> Buyers pay about twice as much for the old wood flooring, he said, which they often imbue with great romance. <br> <br> ``They want to know what building it came from or what river it came out of,&#39;&#39; Smith said. ``It adds to the value of the home for them if they can say `This wood came from an old cotton mill&#39;.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Old timbers also offer some tangible benefits to homeowners, such as density and a rich, warm color, according to John Wells, associate chief for information and education at the Georgia Forestry Commission. <br> <br> Heartwood - the dense core of wood that does not even begin to form until a tree is about 30 years old - is tougher than the surrounding sapwood. Old timbers, Wells said, are often filled with resins and were air-dried to produce hard surfaces that resist dents and scratches. <br> <br> A hundred years ago, nobody even bothered to mill sapwood, he said. <br> <br> ``Back then, people just used heartwood, because they had such an abundant supply of trees,&#39;&#39; Wells said. <br> <br> Now that old-growth pine forests which once covered between 70 and 90 million acres from Virginia to south Florida are virtually gone, salvage is perhaps the only way to get heartwood timbers. <br> <br> Childs, whose parents began the family antique business, saw the trend and opened the salvage operation and millworks. <br> <br> The storefront in Atlanta&#39;s Buckhead district, a nexus of high-end design and decor firms, carries a traditional inventory of paintings and antique furnishings mixed in with wine grape baskets, giant walnut oil pots and a stack of modern-looking chrome stools. <br> <br> ``I&#39;ve got a little bit of everything here retro, deco, nouveau, Louis XIV. I just try to look for things that have character or flair,&#39;&#39; Childs said, standing under a ceiling beam that suspends a winged female figurehead taken from an old ship. <br> <br> His greatest challenge, he says, is juggling the inventory and his purchasing budget to make way for his newest finds. <br> <br> ``I just love all of these things,&#39;&#39; he said. ``Sometimes it&#39;s hard for me to sell something because I&#39;m just not finished looking at it yet.&#39;&#39;