Salvagers collect 'antique' wood to bring a bit of history to any home

<p>Willis Everett has a passion for old wood _ its warm luster, its tight grain and its history, first as trees harvested from swamps and old-growth forests and then as lumber salvaged from historic homes and factories.</p><p>After collecting antique wood for years, Everett launched Vintage Lumber Sales about 15 years ago to fulfill a growing demand for it in upscale homes and businesses.</p><p>"Some like it because you don't have to cut down a growing tree," Everett said. "Some like to romanticize the past and have a little history in their homes. Every piece of wood that's salvaged has some sort of history."</p><p>When European settlers arrived, the South was covered with about 90 million acres of longleaf pine. All that remains of that old-growth forest are about 9,000 protected acres. That leaves reclaimed wood _ from old structures or submerged logs _ as the major source.</p><p>Everett's company supplies everything from lumber to intricate molding. His workers cut it from 1,000-year-old fallen cypress trees trundled from swamp bottoms and from century-old pine wood frames, floors and other pieces salvaged from old buildings that are being razed.</p><p>Customers include the Cloister on coastal Georgia's Sea Island, a five-star hotel that hosted the 2004 G-8 summit. Built in 1928 as a temporary structure, the Cloister is being rebuilt with plenty of antique wood.</p><p>"This wood ... reflects the natural heritage of the Southeastern United States," Cloister spokeswoman Kyle Tibbs Jones said. "The wood is absolutely beautiful."</p><p>Another customer is Atlanta architect Keith Summerour, whose firm specializes in high-quality commercial projects and vacation homes for the wealthy.</p><p>Summerour said the old wood has a more attractive patina and grain than modern wood. "It has a much richer finish. It would be the difference of a countertop made from concrete and a countertop made of marble."</p><p>Former President Jimmy Carter, an amateur cabinetmaker, has also shown a fondness for the old wood.</p><p>"I have made a number of pieces of furniture from old pine that was in the home built by our ancestors when they settled on one of the farms in 1833," he said. "At the time, many of the trees showed that they were as much as 150 years old, with some boards that were 18 inches wide."</p><p>But like other antiques, this old wood doesn't come cheap. Mountain Lumber, near Charlottsville, Va., sells historic heart pine flooring for $8 to $19 per square foot, compared with regular wood flooring for around $4 per square foot.</p><p>Mountain Lumber marketing director David Foky said people who buy the old wood fall into two categories: the extremely wealthy who spare no cost, and less well-heeled customers who buy only enough to make one room special.</p><p>"When we sell flooring, we always give people a history of where that flooring came from," he said. "So if it came out of a mill in South Carolina, we tell them all about that mill. We give them a history that's suitable for framing with pictures."</p><p>Up to 100 companies in the U.S. specialize in old wood, most focusing on trees from their regions, such as ash and walnut from California, maple and American chestnut from the Northeast and fir, spruce, cedar and birch from in the Midwest.</p><p>Mountain Lumber scours the world for unique wood such as ancient Chinese elm and Russian oak, while Everett concentrates on heart pine and cypress gathered in the Eastern states, where he has "pickers" watching for promising demolition projects.</p><p>When the wood arrives, his workers use metal detectors to locate and remove nails and then store the lumber in warehouses. Customers or their architects can come to the mill, about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta, and pick out the wood they want.</p><p>Much of the wood was cut down after the Civil War, when Northern cash started flowing into the war-desolated South. Some of it was used to extend rail lines into forests that had been inaccessible. That led to what Everett terms the "exploitation of Southern resources" _ clear-cutting the forests to supply lumber for the North.</p><p>He views the wood's return as a kind of homecoming.</p><p>Everett's headquarters is located in the former Bank of Gay, which operated from 1907 to 1937. He's turned it into a showcase for antique wood, with hand-planed 12-by-12-inch beams in the ceiling and dark-brown window and door frames from an 1850s house.</p><p>About a block away, there are warehouses full of old wood and a large workshop where workers cut lumber and use computer-guided machines to turn out molding and other millwork.</p><p>Gene Wengert, a University of Wisconsin professor emeritus of wood processing, said antique wood is essential for restoring museums and old homes, but its popularity in modern homes is largely a "vanity factor."</p><p>"It has a distinctive look and ... a price tag that makes it stand out," he said.</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdf424)</p><p>HASH(0x1cdf4cc)</p><p>HASH(0x1ce0164)</p>

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