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Landis company makes new from old
Special to the R&L
A worker pulls metal from reclaimed wood.
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Published: January 14, 2009
LANDIS — Terry Miller was intrigued after spending 45 minutes listening to a stranger explain his big idea to turn building materials from pre-World War II industrial and commercial sites into vintage wooden furniture.
Miller, the owner of Terry Lynn Construction in North Iredell, said Spencer Morten III's vision, which grew into Turning House Millworks and Turning House Furniture, inspired him to move in a new direction.
"I saw his passion," Miller said Tuesday after a media tour of the Millworks facility in Landis. "I saw a chance to improve my business. It's given me the opportunity to do the right thing."
Morten, a fourth-generation furniture manufacturer, unveiled the vertical concept on Tuesday at Corriher Mill.
He came up with the idea a couple years ago when he heard about a preservationist who was interested in salvaging bricks and wood from an abandoned plant to use for restorations in Europe. He later saw some furniture made from reclaimed wood.
"I was taken back by how good the old wood looked as furniture," Morten said.
Born in the abandoned yarn rooms and tobacco auction houses of the old industrial South, the process is expected to save thousands of trees. The final product produced by Turning House Furniture will debut at the April 2009 High Point Market.
"You can make (wood) look like it's old, but there is a whole lot of difference between reclaimed and distressed," said Millworks Plant Manager Stuart Shoun.
In the case of the Corriher Mill plant, the deconstructed portion is expected to provide the wood equivalent of 19,000 trees.
What's left will be used as Turning House Millworks' base of operations.
The old textile mill was selected to be the millworks portion of the Turning House enterprise because of its central location, said Miller, Turning House Millworks director of national sales and materials acquisition.
Deconstructing these old buildings puts the company in a good position, Morten said, adding that thousands of buildings around the state are candidates to be deconstructed.
However, the company isn't going to tear down just any building. The old factories and mills selected by Turning House are abandoned 70- to 150-year-old structures with no historic value.
However, the company recognizes the importance of each factory and mill's story and has hired a journalist to chronicle these stories for the building materials and three furniture portfolios.
A tag describing where the wood came from and the function of that particular building will accompany each piece of furniture sold.
In the past, these buildings have been demolished with little effort to reclaim the old materials, Morten said. As a result, birdseye maple, black walnut, wormy chestnut and southern long leaf pine would end up in a landfill somewhere.
Some of these woods are considered rare or extinct, he said.
"We recycle 98 percent of the buildings we take title to," Morten said.
Miller, who has been in the demolition business for 30 years, said the concept of deconstruction is fairly new. He said he is one of a few demolition contractors who takes the time to reclaim pieces from old buildings.
"Before, it was all crush and haul," he said.
Around 17 of Miller's employees are working at three sites, including one in Mooresville, to take down each building brick by brick and board by board.
"Some of these buildings that we worked on have been empty for 15 years," Miller said.
The process requires them to take every nail, nut and bolt out of the buildings until it's back down to the bare ground, Miller said.
Even the foundations will be ground up and recycled, said Miller's daughter Amy, a wood expert and the coordinator for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
"Deconstruction is an art," she said.
For example, the crew will determine where the last wooden board was placed in the room and will begin the process of pulling up the boards, she said. All of the boards being pulled up by the crew Tuesday were in near-good condition and still had the tongue and grooves on them.
A lot of the material, such as the hand-pressed brick, can be used for historic preservation projects.
The wooden materials are sent to the old Corriher Mill on South Main Street in Landis, where workers take out any loose pieces of metal and ceramics. From there, the wood is either sold or cut down to make furniture or custom building material.
Millworks manager Shoun said the 11 mill workers sometimes don't know what kind of wood they are working with until they saw into it.
All of the cut wood is sent to Godfrey Lumber in Statesville to be dry kilned before being sent to either a builder or one of the furniture manufacturers.
Caroline Hippie and Dixon Bartlett of Atlanta-based HB2 are the creative directors charged with designing the furniture portfolios that will make up Turning House Furniture's collection.
Hippie said it was wonderful to be able to work with such a variety of wood.
"We are creating a collection that will use a broad spectrum of wood," Hippie said. "We are so lucky to have that."
Morten said the real treasure in the entire operation is the wood that will be showcased.
"These are the Turning House stars," he said, passing out various samples, "and they will be coming to a home near you, hopefully."
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