Bob & Stacey –
Steve, Gabriel and I traveled over to Idaho today with one of our local building material suppliers to look at some reclaimed timbers at IGL Reclaimed Timbers. They have an extensive inventory of reclaimed material, almost all of it Douglas Fir, which is what we want for your house. They also have a large wood shop, and mill siding, flooring, trim, fabricate trusses, and also make doors from reclaimed material. You will see in the accompanying photos a good selection of what they have to offer in timbers. The photos are of material that is sized to work for the timbers that we will need, with some of the material needing to be sawn on 1 or 2 faces to get the dimensions we require (the cut faces would be located so as not to be visible). The all gray natural patina is not a realistic spec. for this material, as the gray color is from exposure to the sun, so while some faces may be weathered gray, most of the material is brown. So, while some of these bunks may appear to be uniformly gray, once you cut the bands and start sorting through the timbers, most faces will be brown. This is the nature of reclaimed timbers, so if gray is still the predominant color you wish to see, we will need to look at other options such as aging patinas (mild acid applications that accelerate the UV aging process), or staining the wood (usually with several colors to give a more natural look). We look forward to hearing your comments on this material. Thanks, Dave
