Reclaimed wood is used wood that has been taken for re-use. Often this is wood from long-standing idle buildings, and its sometimes refinished for new purposes. Most reclaimed wood comes from timbers and decking rescued from old barns, factories and warehouses and some companies have been known to source wood from less traditional structures such as boxcars, coal mines, and wine barrels.  Using reclaimed wood can earn credits towards achieving LEED project certification. Because reclaimed wood is considered recycled content, it meets the Materials & Resources criteria for LEED certification and because some reclaimed lumber products are FSC certified, they can qualify for LEED credits under the “certified wood” category.

 “The challenge with reclaimed wood in our industry is that it can be difficult to use for sandblasting because it may be dry, brittle and cracking, or even still moist or rotted depending on what it was used for,” says Jordan Uditsky, American Sign Factory’s President.  “In this case, we located Redwood that had actually been used for an old barn and water tank that our supplier estimated at 80 to 100 years old, with the tree itself probably also being that old before it had been cut down to make the barn…meaning the wood itself is probably 150 years old or older!”  When presented with the old barn and tank wood, Mike Satanovsky, American’s VP of Production noted that, “much of the wood we tracked down was rotted and unusable for sandblasting.  On the wood used for the water tank you could still actually see the stains from the water on the side of the wood facing the inside of the tank and the impression from the steel ring that held the tank together.  After sorting through it all we were able to piece together enough wood to make the sign.  First we had to cut the boards to size, plane and sand them before glueing them together.  We then cut the surface to shape, sanded it again and then sandblasted the design before finishing it with Starbucks standard green and white colors.”