\n\u2014 The material you use for furniture is called differently: old, reclaimed, restored, retro, even antique\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Yes, but the most common term we use is \u201cbarn wood\u201d or \u201cbarn oak,\u201d because oak is the only wood we work with. Although, personally, I don\u2019t really like the term \u201cbarn.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 But could other naturally aged types of wood also be used for such purposes?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 You can also use naturally aged spruce or larch. With modern restoration, they can look beautiful too, but we work exclusively with oak.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 Is it hard to find such material?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Actually, we don\u2019t find it \u2014 we buy it. Maybe in the past furniture makers of this kind had to travel around villages searching for it, but now a market for reclaimed wood has formed in Ukraine. There are people who collect it across the country and sell it to us.<\/em>
However, nowadays it has become more difficult not so much to buy as to transport purchased materials, usually from northern regions where barn oak is most commonly harvested. Since old wood is a unique material and its market supply is smaller than that of regular timber, it has always been more expensive. And during the war, considering that most of the harvesting takes place in the shelling-prone border regions with Russia, prices have risen even more.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 Obviously, restoring such wood must be more troublesome than working with new timber\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Much more. Removing rot \u2014 including through washing \u2014 and extracting old nails are complex and labor-intensive processes. They can\u2019t be automated, so there\u2019s a lot of manual work involved.<\/em>
Even though we use advanced metal detectors to find metal fragments, there\u2019s always a risk that something remains, which can damage cutting tools. Moreover, the tools wear out much faster when working with wood compacted by time.<\/em>
There\u2019s another difficulty: to chisel out a leftover nail from a hardened beam, you have to damage part of it, which increases waste of such costly material.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 Given all these complexities and the uniqueness of barn wood, you probably don\u2019t have many competitors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 And yet, competition is growing. At the beginning of the war, I knew only three similar companies; now there are at least ten.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 From your social media, we learned that you recently furnished a restaurant in London with barn oak products. How did you find such a client?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Actually, it\u2019s a Ukrainian client \u2014 a nationwide restaurant chain for which we\u2019ve already completed several projects in different cities of Ukraine. The restaurant in London is also theirs. That\u2019s how we practically entered the export market. Just recently, another of their restaurants opened in Dnipro, for which we also made furniture.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\u2014 You\u2019d probably agree that this kind of furniture making doesn\u2019t have a long-term future, since the number of old buildings \u2014 the source of barn oak \u2014 will gradually decrease. Have you thought about that?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u2014 Yes. Diversification of risks is necessary in our case. That\u2019s why we are already setting up parallel production using regular oak for manufacturing tabletops.<\/p>\n
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