Our restorer recently made a beautiful kitchen oak using almost entirely oak that we reclaimed from a local church!
It's always exciting when a church gets in touch as even though there might not be much practical or easy to sell furniture for us to reclaim (which is what we are generally always on the hunt for) there is always bound to be a load of very high quality timber in one form or another. Churches rarely had to spare any expense when having items made back in the day and some of the craftsmanship, carving and design can be really quite outstanding. In the past we have had wonderfully carved gothic oak pews supposedly from the workshop of local legend Harry Hems as well as huge pitch pine dividers with Biblical scenes hand painted on them.
Obviously anything that is beautiful or important in any way is left as is and sold on as found - we would never break up anything like that. But we also get lots of very very large pews (around 14ft long) from churches and these are almost impossible to sell due to their size. In that situation we cut the pews down to make them a more practical size (mostly 4ft to 6ft) and we are then left with lots of nice old wood to play with.
Sometimes this is made in to shelves or used to restore other pieces of antique/ old furniture that comes in but in this instance we had an abundance of lovely solid oak from some pews that came from a local mid century church.
Some of this was from pews that we cut down and some was in the from of paneling etc that had little secondary use as it was so we started on designing a kitchen island!
Work initially started with almost a full week of sanding to get all of the oak back to a uniformed, workable level. Then pieces were split down and separated so we could see exactly what we had to work with.
The main body of the island was made from two pew backs which perfectly made up the two sides and the back. The framing, base boards and drawers were all made from other bits of oak from the same church and the worktop was also made from two of the pew seats with an offcut of slate that we had in the yard set in the middle.
The rear base boards and a small amount of hidden framing had to be made from reclaimed pine boarding from our stores and a tiny amount of new T&G boarding was used for the drawer bases but otherwise it is all made from oak from that one local church!
It took about 3 weeks for our restorer to make the island once he got going., Being a small team we all have to muck in with other jobs around the yard so that time wasn't all spent on the island but it was still quite an epic build.
Once it was finally done it was dismantled again and carried down to our showroom where it now sits. We have left it as bare wood so that the buyer can decide whether they want to paint it, stain it or just clear wax it and we also haven't fitted any handles to the drawers so there is the ability to go for knobs, cup handles, pull handles etc without having to worry about leaving random holes in the lovely newly sanded oak.
The worktop definitely needs oiling to protect it but again we have left it raw for the time being in case someone wants to use a dark stain on it before it is sealed with a clear oil.
It's a beautiful piece and I can't wait to find out where it ends up and the timber gets to have a second life in someone's kitchen after many decades in a church!
Size: 200cm x 114cm x 91cm high
Price: £2950