I’m new to blogging! The advice I’ve been given is to write as if I’m talking to someone. So here goes...
Wood Hoarders!
Neil and I have always hoarded wood. You know, those bits that might just come in handy when the right project comes along! I’ve never really questioned why!
Where the wood stash started! Our old chicken run! This is me sorting Victorian floorboards taken from a skip outside a house in Tunbridge Wells. We use them to make our larger hearts and the backboards for many of our streets of houses, net houses and lighthouses.
Why reclaimed wood?
I was recently asked ‘why reclaimed wood?’ I must admit it would be much easier to go to a timber yard and select planed and beautifully straight uniform lengths of wood but to us it has little soul.
On reflection I believe it comes from a love of trees. Pick any social media platform and it will be full of picturesque woodland. Right now it’s all bluebell walks that look like they’ve come straight out of the pages of a fairytale book. I’m left in little doubt that we’re a nation of tree lovers, and quite rightly so but this is not the place to wax lyrical on the many virtues of our arboreal friends. Instead I want to question how we let the byproduct of those glorious trees go to waste? I think there’s a kind of disconnect between the tree in all it’s splendour and the pallet it has become and that’s pretty sad.
How much wood is recycled?
In 2015 10 million tonnes of wood was discarded in the UK and of that only 1 million tonnes was recycled. Recycling wood on a large scale is tricky, different wood products have to be recycled in different ways and of course before that can happen it needs to be sorted, you get the picture?
How RugsyLugsy reuse wood
The wood for these boats came from three different sources! My favourite is the mast that came from a set of teak garden furniture dumped on the street!
But surely we can precycle? Well that’s what we do. We take wood that’s considered no longer useful and turn it into something beautiful. I feel that with each product we celebrate the tree that the wood came from and of course the landfill that’s a little emptier and the bonfire that’s a little smaller.
It’s our little way of saving the planet, one string of wooden bunting at a time!
Thanks for listening! Cha xx