MATERIAL

By Plinth Studio · Apr 2025 · 2 min read

Reclaimed timber done badly is just old wood. Done properly, it's the best material story a project can have.

There's a version of ‘reclaimed timber’ that's really just a marketing word — a thin veneer of old-looking boards nailed over plywood, imported from somewhere nobody can trace. That's not what we mean.

Properly reclaimed timber comes with provenance: a building it came from, a species you can identify, a reason it was structurally sound enough to save. It needs to be assessed for movement, treated for what it's been through, and — often — re-milled before it's usable again.

Done that way, it costs more than new timber, not less, and it takes longer to source. What you get back is a material with forty or eighty years of movement already worked out of it, and a story that a new board simply doesn't have.

We use it where the story matters and the budget allows — a stair, a kitchen run, a feature ceiling. Not as a green rubber stamp on the whole project.