recycled timber........is it worth it?

Our dear friends Paul and Michelle offered us a run down turn-of-the-century timber villa to take down. I obviously jumped at the offer. Armed with no experience/idea, a hammer, saw and crowbar (as no power closeby) i started tearing bits off the inside. In the process splitting all the more valuable rimu trims etc. Ah...first lesson learnt there, lets slow down and have a think about it. I got pretty good at this though by the time i reached the less valuable framing timber!

The house was actually complete with floor lino, wall paper, gib, everything; so for every 1 weekend of timber work the next 2 were spent clearing up and removing the mess created. Removing wall T&G is pretty tricky, so a friend helped with that. By now timber stacked everywhere so another weekend or 2 transporting this to a nearby shed. Basically i worked on all the internal framed walls etc and then took the roof down; a big job but satisfying. Then strip off the weatherboards and struggled to pull the exterior walls down. All the time assessing the timber, sawing off the rotten ends and doing denailing here and there, more stacking etc. Borrowed a floorboard lifting jig off a friend (turing over the floor on my own and then banging off the joists just wasn't going to happen!) that worked very well.

Result:- Time taken was one weekend a month for 18 months on my own generally; a huge burn pile as 2/3rds of the timber only suitable for this; a double shed full of stacked timber with 1/2 of it still having nails. To cut a long story it took a further 14 days to denail and stack that timber into the container. Half of it painted.

Would i do it again.............denailed stripped recycled timber is expensive to buy but the route i took was so slow. Interestingly I salvaged a few bits from a local villa that had been pushed over by a digger. Whereas i had tried to save every useable length, the timber here was still in reasonable condition and a lot was salvaged by many people. If i was to do it again i would carefully strip any valuable internal timber, then have the house pushed over and then carefully lift the floor.

The story continues as the container load of timber will need to put through a thicknesser (with plenty of blade sharpening time!), have paint stripped, and further sorted with more eventually burnt. But if you want that look and can't afford the prices...............