Q: Are there any stores with locally made, repurposed furniture?
A: Today’s furniture reminds me of Spam, all reconstituted bits and no class.
It’s a sea of fake wood out there, and I’d be okay with that if the wood came from entirely recycled sources stuck together with non-toxic binders. But inevitably, beneath the wood veneer on shelves, tables and desks you’ll find compressed particles of largely virgin trees bound together with formaldehyde glues, all assembled shoddily in other countries.
Knocking on furniture to sniff out solid wood won’t do squat to help you track down planet-conscious furniture either. Solid wood may not off-gas formaldehyde glues, but who knows where that wood was clear-cut?
I’ve mouthed off before about the dark side of our exotic wood lust (consider this my ‘Hands off!’ reminder for any of you going patio furniture shopping), so let’s just cut to the chase and talk about the joys of making the most of trees that lost their lives in years past.
Conscious furniture designers know you don’t have to axe a living tree to make a table. The best wood is in old barns, warehouses, piers, houses, bowling alleys – you name it. Stores like the Junction’s Forever Interiors, the kings of shabby chic, know that well. Martin Scott salvages the wooden skeletons of old churches and renoed houses within 5 kilometres of his store to make amazing tables. He turns old doors into gorgeous cabinets, kitchen is-lands or cool blackboards. And check out his patchwork block tables made from leftover wood (foreverinteriors.com).
MADE on Dundas West offers a whole different take on found pieces. Think vintage chairs restored with new legs from driftwood and fallen branches, or spliced metal jewellery pieces. These guys sell high-profile repurposing designers like the Brothers Dressler (madedesign.ca).
Lubo on Dundas West also crafts pieces from demolished buildings and barns. He’s even got stools made from the cedar pier that lined Toronto’s original shoreline, which was dug up to construct condos. He’s made benches from wood from the John Abell factory, torn down for, you guessed it, more condos (lubodesign.com).
Other sources include Salvage Interiors (salvageinteriors.com), Canadian Salvaged Timber (canadiansalvagedtimber.ca) or Urban Tree Salvage, which uses trees cut down right here in the GTA. As well, there’s Cityandnorth.com, which makes more affordable custom stuff, and loft-dweller fave Hardware Interiors on Queen East in Leslieville (hardwareinteriors.com), or Post and Beam, which focuses on architectural reclamation (pandb.ca).
Of course, your classic recycled furniture options involve two choices: antique shops and thrift stores, though your thrifts will have plenty of old pressed wood junk. Antique shops may be getting pushed further and further out of the city’s core, but you can still find some great vintage furniture shops in certain pockets, namely Leslieville, Parkdale and the Junction. And probably the coolest antique market in the country is just an hour’s drive away – the open-air Aberfoyle Antique Market in Guelph sits on 20 green acres dotted with barns, cabins and stalls.
You can bring your own random finds to my fave whimsical furniture repurposer, Poppyseed Creative Living, and she’ll breathe a whole new life into them (etsy.com/shop/Poppyseedliving).
And don’t forget online sources like Kijiji and Craigslist. I jumped on both just now and found reclaimed bowling alley tables, an old barn wood bed frame and a coffee table made from an 1830s door. I scored an awesome high-top bar table on Kijiji that originally came from GreenTea Design, which makes new furniture from old wood reclaimed from Korean warehouses, barns and homes.
Speaking of which, those who like a more exotic look should skip Asian reproductions of antiques made with new trees in Asian factories and stick to genuine antiques. You can find stunning 50- to 120-year-old pieces from India, Indonesia, Mongolia and China at stores like my long-time faves, RusTeak and Jalan. These ain’t local, though true antiques from abroad are greener than all the cheap imported furniture shipped in to supply Toronto’s bad boys.
But who’s greener than repurposed local? Nooobody!
Got a question?
Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com
