Carved wooden bench and craft objects in a timber interior

Barn oak · Factory pine · Ship's teak

Furniture Made From Timber That Already Had a Life

The oak in a two-hundred-year-old barn frame grew slowly, dried for a century and is harder, more stable and more interesting than anything a plantation will produce in our lifetime. We buy it when barns come down, along with factory floor pine, school laboratory tops, ship's teak and elm from felled street trees, then dry it, scan it for metal, mill it and build furniture to a measured room: tables, kitchens, shelving, desks, beds and staircases, joined properly and finished with oil rather than lacquer.

What We Make Discuss a Piece

About us

A Workshop That Started as a Salvage Yard

The business began by buying the timber from a collapsing barn to save it from a bonfire, and spent the following three years working out what to do with it. Reclaimed wood is not simply old wood: it is full of nails, screws, bolts, embedded grit and occasionally lead shot, it has moved and twisted for a century, and it arrives at whatever moisture content the building it came from had. Handling it properly needs a metal detector, a kiln, patience and a willingness to lose a third of the volume.

Every board that comes into the yard is recorded: where it came from, what the building was, when it was demolished and what species it is. It is scanned with a metal detector, de-nailed, cut back to sound material, kiln dried to a stable moisture content for a heated interior and stacked to acclimatise before machining. Clients receive the provenance of the timber in their piece, which for most of them turns out to matter more than the specification of the finish.

Construction is deliberately traditional. Tables are joined with drawbored mortise and tenon or sliding dovetails rather than screws and brackets, tops are made so they can move seasonally without splitting, doors and drawers are fitted by hand, and everything is finished with hardwax oil that can be repaired locally rather than a lacquer that has to be stripped. A piece that can be taken apart, re-oiled or re-topped in thirty years is the entire point of using timber that has already lasted two hundred.

Old timber-framed barn overgrown with vegetation

Advantages

Why Reclaimed Timber Is Worth the Trouble

Six differences between salvaged wood handled properly and new stock from a merchant.

Slow-Grown, Genuinely Stable

Oak cut from woodland two centuries ago grew far more slowly than modern plantation timber, giving tight growth rings, greater density and a hardness that is immediately obvious when you machine it. It has also spent a hundred years or more moving through every seasonal cycle a building could impose, so once it is re-dried it stays where it is put. New oak of the same dimension will cup, twist and open at the joints for years; a table top made from a barn purlin will not.

Metal Detected and Properly Dried

Every board is scanned before it goes near a machine, because a forgotten nail destroys a planer blade and can throw a fragment across a workshop. Timber is then kiln dried to the moisture content of a heated interior rather than left at the sixteen or eighteen per cent it arrives at, and stacked to acclimatise afterwards. Skipping either step is why so much reclaimed furniture splits in its first winter, and it is the main reason our pieces cost more than a market stall equivalent.

Marks Kept, Damage Removed

There is a difference between character and defect. Peg holes, saw marks, weathered faces, old mortises and colour variation are what make the material worth using, and we keep them deliberately, placing them where they are visible. Rot, active woodworm, splits that will spread, deep grit and surfaces contaminated with old preservative are cut out entirely. Clients see the boards before machining and say which marks they want in the finished piece, which is a conversation most furniture buyers never get to have.

Built to the Room, Not to a Catalogue

Pieces are measured on site: the height of a windowsill a shelf must pass under, the width of a hallway a table must be carried through, the fall of a floor a cabinet has to sit level on, the position of a radiator, the swing of a door. Drawings are produced before anything is cut and adjusted until the client is certain. Nothing is more expensive than a beautiful table that will not go up the stairs, and we have measured a good many staircases to make sure that does not happen.

Joints That Outlive Fashion

Mortise and tenon, drawbored and pegged; sliding dovetails for breadboard ends; frame and panel doors that allow movement; tops fixed with buttons or slotted plates so they can expand across the grain. No knock-down fittings, no chipboard, no biscuits doing structural work. It is slower and it means a table can be taken apart, moved, re-glued and re-topped decades from now rather than being thrown away when the veneer lifts and the brackets pull out of the particleboard.

Finishes That Can Be Repaired

Hardwax oil and soap finishes can be spot-repaired by the owner with a cloth and twenty minutes, which matters on a kitchen table that will meet hot pans, wine and children. Lacquer looks flawless for two years and then has to be stripped entirely to fix a single mark. Every piece leaves with the finish it was made with, a small bottle of it and written instructions, and we re-finish pieces free of charge in their first year if the owner is unhappy with how a surface has worn.

Services

What the Workshop Builds

Tables, kitchens, storage, desks, staircases, restoration and timber supply.

Timber-framed building facade in an old town street

Tables and Dining Furniture

Dining tables, refectory tables, benches, coffee tables and side tables built from single-source boards wherever the width allows, with pegged frames, breadboard ends and tops that move without splitting. Extending mechanisms are fitted where a room demands them, using engineered slides that will still work in twenty years. Every table is dry-assembled in the workshop and photographed before finishing so the client can approve the grain layout.

Kitchens and Worktops

Freestanding and fitted kitchen furniture, islands, larders, dressers and solid worktops in reclaimed oak, elm and iroko, machined and finished for wet use with a specification suitable around sinks and hobs. We template on site after the units are in, cut sink and hob apertures ourselves, and oil the underside as well as the top, which is the step most installers skip and the reason so many solid worktops cup within a year.

Storage, Shelving and Beds

Bookcases and alcove shelving scribed to uneven walls, wardrobes and cupboards fitted into awkward roof spaces, sideboards, chests, hall benches with boot storage, and beds from simple frames to four-posters, all built to the actual dimensions of the room rather than to a standard size. Drawers run on wooden runners or on quality metal slides according to the client's preference, and every piece is designed to be dismantled for a future move.

Desks, Offices and Commercial Work

Home desks with cable management that is designed rather than drilled afterwards, meeting tables, reception counters, bar tops, restaurant tables and shop fittings, produced in matched batches from a single timber source so that twenty tables look like a set. Commercial work is quoted with a programme and delivered in phases where a business cannot close, and we hold surplus stock from each contract for future replacements.

Repair and Restoration

Re-gluing and re-pegging loose frames, replacing broken rails and split tops, patching woodworm damage with matched timber, re-flattening cupped surfaces, replacing failed modern fixings with proper joints, and re-finishing tired pieces. We work on furniture made by anybody, including inherited pieces of no great value that matter to their owners, and we say honestly when a repair will cost more than the piece is worth and let them decide anyway.

Timber Supply to Makers

Prepared reclaimed boards sold to other furniture makers, joiners and self-builders: de-nailed, metal-scanned, kiln dried and machined to thickness if wanted, with the provenance recorded. Beams, floorboards, cladding and character stock are available in quantity, and buyers are welcome to select their own boards in the yard. We also buy timber from demolition contractors and private owners taking down a barn, and will quote for lifting it ourselves.

Contacts

Commissions, Timber and Visits

Send the room dimensions, a photograph of the space and an idea of what it needs to do. We will suggest a design and a timber, give a price range before drawing anything, and tell you plainly when a simpler piece would serve better.

Timber buyers, restoration enquiries and anybody with a barn coming down are welcome to contact the same yard.

Workshop27 Rue Saint-Ferréol, 13001 Marseille, France

Phone+33 4 91 33 84 27

Emailsecondgrainfurniture@outlook.com

Workshop HoursTuesday–Saturday 09:00–18:00; yard visits by appointment