Gallery: After The Barn: Historic Furn...
200 year old hemlock barn wood was used to create this wonderful bench
As we move further and further from our traditional agricultural ways we find ourselves surrounded by underused farming materials, especially barns. After The Barn is taking the once beautiful pastoral structures that are on the verge of collapse and transforming them into brilliant pieces of furniture. The company, a father-son duo and a young furniture builder from Campbell hall, a small town 70 miles north of New York City in Orange County, NY, travel around New York helping to properly, and painstakingly, dismantle historic barns and give a second life to the barn wood. The end result is handcrafted one-of-a-kind solid furniture that founder Bob Staab views as the company’s way of recycling a part of American history.
The small crew crafts everything from kitchen and side tables to custom cabinetry and wooden art pieces. They hand select barn wood that is healthy with unique grains and textures emphasizing the true originality of their work. The most interesting aspect of the barn wood used is that each historic barn can contain multiple kinds of timber resulting in many different shades and textures in the pieces, even if the wood all comes from the same barn.
“We believe it is better to recycle the wood from old structures, transforming and redefining their role and enhancing their value rather than to relegating the old beams, walls and floors to a landfill,” Staab told Cool Hunting.
After The Barn shows that there are plenty of options for getting the most out of what we already have. What we like most about this company is their start-to-finish process that makes it easy to enjoy, appreciate and find pleasure from owning a piece of handcrafted furniture; it is also a way to have a little bit of American culture will last generations.
After The Barn also makes custom designed furniture, perfect for uniquely shaped NYC apartments, but they also have dozens of barn wood furniture already built available on their website and also on display at their showroom in Greenwich, Connecticut. Additionally their Facebook page has beautiful photos from the step-by-step process of reclaiming and transforming the barn wood.
All Images © After The Barn
