Reclaimed Timber Furniture

I got a hold of a ton of high quality tropical hardwood (you can’t even buy timber this good anymore, with the state of the world’s forests), and couldn’t stand to see it thrown away! So I bought a small table saw online and started to build furniture from the reclaimed waste timber. Good for the budget and the environment!

Taking the upcycled theme further, I designed and built some small side tables from some leftover aluminium cladding samples (perks of being an architect!). The table is simply framed with concealed dowel joints and the top is held in place with glue and finishing nails.

I used some of the timber deck sub-framing girders to make these simple stools, which can be combined and stacked in a variety of ways. The joint of the angled legs is expressed on the surface with an exposed end grain. The condition of the girders (lots of screw holes) was hidden by laminating the holey surfaces together. Since the lengths of the leftover material were irregular and there was a limited supply, I staggered the ends of the stool which also gives them a bit of interest.

After getting a bit more practice on the table saw, I made this slightly more complex side table with a pinwheel compound leg design and a recessed support for the table top. The surface, made from fine Italian marble, was also a discarded architectural sample, free and saving space in the landfill!

I also created a series of benches, using the reclaimed timber planks as slats for the bench seating surface, and simply joining them together with threaded stainless steel rods, washers and hex nuts. This assembly technique is extremely simple, just drilling holes for the steel rod and tightening the bench into place. The legs were crafted from the same timber, roughly cut to tapered shape with a jigsaw and then rounded off with a hand planer.

This bench used the same construction technique, using remaining pieces of various lengths with a staggered seating surface design. I ended up keeping this one and moving it to the roof terrace at my new place!

I also built a pair of bedside tables using a similar steel rod technique. I had been looking for very long bedside tables since I always have a laptop by the bed, and the slatted design turned out perfect for to stop my mac from overheating! I love these so much that I moved them to my (very tiny) bedroom at my new place, they were slightly too deep but due to the steel rod assembly technique I was able to simply remove a few slats and they fit in perfectly!

One of my favourite designs that I created is a series of staggered shelves, with various shelf sizes to hold books and display objects of different scales. Due to the staggered design, each shelf could be simply screwed into the vertical support from the opposing side without any special hardware. I re-used the old stainless steel screws that were taken out with the decking, more recycling! You can see the original sketch of the design below, and after that a view of the shelf installation which continues seamlessly from inside my living room out onto the balcony.

Using some of the end scraps from the benches, I did a pair of floor mats joined with stainless steel and separated with spacers, which are durable and weatherproof mats that I’m using on one of my balconies.

I had just enough timber left over to use for some cladding during the renovation of my new place. I used the timber as vertical slats in various widths and depths to cover a steel framed planter and garden sink, and a screen to cover up mechanical services in an airwell.