Who Are We?
Our Company
We strive to contribute to living in harmony with our environment by intercepting wood destine for the landfill and creating beauty and value from it. The employees have the eye and the skills necessary to bring that beauty out in a way that is appreciated by many.
We also strive to make work someplace we want to be and we allow a blurring of the lines between work and the rest of the lives of our team members. Work hours are flexible, calls and texts from home are encouraged, mistakes are celebrated and we strive to keep the work stress as low as we can while creating outstanding products.
Several of our team members have unseen disabilities which would make it difficult for them to work anywhere else. We work hard to create a work environment which allows them to thrive and contribute in meaningful, and sometimes surprising, ways. Some other team members have "colorful" backgrounds and have yet learned how to make it in this world. We give them chances, we correct the mistakes, we create consequences to help them learn and we give them chance after chance to prove themselves. Most of the time it would be easier to terminate the employment relationship and move on, but we are committed to helping these team members succeed, and we celebrate the ones who do.
In short, we deign to be more than a business focused on profits, we strive to make our small part of the world a better place to be.
Our People
Our numbers are few, but we're a group with a lot of passion, a lot of hard work, and we're usually covered in a lot of sawdust. The small crew comes from varied backgrounds, some with no prior experience, but each person has valuable assets and brings a personal touch to the way they do things.
Our History
Demolition
Are you local to the Salt Lake area?
Do you have a barn, shed, deck or fence with weathered wood?
We might be interested in removing said structure for you. Don't get too excited - only the the largest of barns with just the right wood have enough value to to justify any payment for the structure.
If you think have something we may want to salvage, send us some photos and sizes to shop@historicwoods.net.
Remilling
If we worked with new wood we would just buy some wood and start making something, but we work with reclaimed wood, so it is not that easy. Once the wood is back to our shop we need to dismantle anything which is still attached:
Then we get as much metal out as quick as we can and stack the wood.
Then we defect out any parts of the wood which just won't work for anything,
Then we sort the wood into our different products.
Then we go back through the wood with metal detectors to remove all the metal we can find.
Then a lot of the wood gets power washed.
Then we cut, trim, mill or do whatever else we need to to get the wood to a usable condition.
Then we can start making something from it.
Like many businesses, ours started out in a garage, but our story started long before. Kyle, our proprietor has always done something with wood and in 2006 the timing was right to put to use the experience he had gained leading the reclaimed wood divisions for a couple of other companies.
At first the the business plan was simple. Kyle would use his wide range of contacts to source reclaimed wood and have it remilled and then then delivered directly to the customer. It was a good business model until... the great recession which dramatically changed the reclaimed wood industry. We needed to change also, so in the depths of the recession we started salvaging wood locally in the Salt Lake City area and moved out of our garage shop, which had been used mostly for making product samples, and into a commercial shop and we started looking to create additional product lines and selling online became a great way to reach an entirely new customer base.
Our online sales volume grew quickly giving us opportunities to exercise our creativity and extend our product line even further. So in addition to the flooring, timbers and siding we started the business with we now also offer feature walls, mantels, millwork stock, live edge slabs, picture frames, crates, shelves, shadow boxes, and furniture.
We have moved from our first shop into a larger shop and accumulated more inventory and more equipment. Now much of the millwork we used to outsource we now do in house and we have a showroom for our local customers.
Wood Crafted to Inspire
How is our wood crafted to inspire?
Trees do a wonderful job of creating inspirational wood.
Nature does an incredible job of wearing down that wood to create an imperfect beauty.
Our craftspeople utilize the natural beauty of the wood and it's aging to create inspiring products.