Tree to Closet PART 1...

It wasn't long after arriving at Malcolm Island when we realized there was amazing potential to create a pretty cool piece of our house out of something very local and readily available. Jim's creative wheels were turning when he thought out this idea for an unusual addition to our house. Then, on one of our early explorations in Spring 2018 we encountered a local logger.  He was actively logging on an island woodlot and we stopped to say hi.  Jim eventually asked if he'd be interested in selling us a portion of one tree to make a ...wait for it.... front closet.  Not just any old closet, but a closet made out of a piece of one cedar tree - floor to ceiling - kept round, featuring a hinged cedar door that opened with the touch of a fingertip.  Jim could see it in his mind's eye as he animatedly spoke about his dream of incorporating part of Malcolm Island into our home's bones.

Our new friend looked at us with surprise and delight and said yes immediately.  He said he was always interested in what creative things people are doing with wood and he wanted to support us.  So we purchased 12 feet of this 850 year old cedar tree for a modest sum.  Now we know this tree inch by inch as we've transformed her over the last few months. 

The clearing where we found our 850 year old cedar to make our unique front closet in May 2018.

We templated each end, took measurements, looked for prominent features,

sensual curves and possible rot.  We templated our plywood floor at the house too.

Jim took a tiny chunk of wood from our tree, cleaned it up a bit, and began counting rings. This small piece of the tree only spans my hand, revealing how dense the cedar is. That's 290 years in the shot and the tree was about 850 years old. 

When Malcolm Island was logged 100 or so years ago this tree was rejected, likely for it's poor health, it's cathedral top and the rot, which the loggers would have known had already started in the centre of the tree. It may have had an irregular shape also and curved trees were worth less than straight ones. "Our" tree has great curves, and that's what we wanted.  Now as the local logging community cuts the 100 year old second growth trees, some of these old giants are left to decay in the forest and some are cut. These harvested trees are now very marketable for different types of customers, such as us, providing income for local families. Aren't we lucky to have 12 feet!

We had our tree cut into four slabs to manage easier for moving. 

The unused portion was cut up for various projects and fire wood.

These two rounds will be future cool coffee tables.  They're now perched in our driveway with a
tin roof on top, naturally drying out next to our driveway.

Once evenly cut into four pieces we used metal wedges and a sledge hammer to hammer off chunks of weighty wood. You can see how cold it was in November 2019 on one of our many tree to closet cutting excursions.

I may be scrawny but I can still use a sledge and give Jim a break at the same time.

Unfortunately we don't have many pictures taken of us actually moving the slabs from land behind our storage unit to our house because we were too busy doing it!  Here's how it went...

Each rough cut piece weighed 200 - 300 lbs and there were four pieces to move! We needed a trailer.  Friends to the rescue!  We borrowed a sturdy tilting trailer from our neighbours Kathleen and Jim Blohm to haul the four pieces home. Thanks to both of you!!!  Having a way to get those four pieces back to the house was half the battle.  

We managed to get the slabs in the back of the trailer one by one using a come-along set up on our truck.   Inch by inch each piece slid onto the tilted trailer then righted itself for the trip home. Once there,  Jim had to back the trailer part way down our driveway then jam on the brakes FAST so the momentum would slide the piece down the tilted trailer towards our tent about 10 feet below.  It worked so well the first time that we repeated it three more times over a few days. We created ways of lifting the pieces onto saw horses without killing our backs so we could begin the slow process of transformation. 

Of course Jim couldn't stop himself from working on piece 1 as soon as we got it on saw horses outside the tent.

Many hours were spent debarking each piece and searching for signs of bugs while we did it. 

It was quite Zen-Like and very satisfying when you got down to bare wood.  
Jim then took over and smoothed the whole piece with a grinder. 

Of course we then had to turn the piece over so Jim could start the sawing and
grinding process to take weight and density out of the inside closet space.
 The ultimate goal is to create as much space inside the closet so we can to fit hangers and coats.

Carving out the inside of the first piece to a more manageable depth.  
Once it was given a preliminary clean up, it was ready to be moved
into the tent where the real work began. 

We used boards, sawhorses and rollers to move each piece inside.  Not easy but we did it!

Jim built giant callipers to measure each piece and calculate the finished thickness. 
Then we began chiseling and carving bit by bit over a period of weeks. 

To begin with I helped chisel where I could but Jim's skill with sharp tools is far superior to mine so he became chief carver pretty much immediately.  I provided moral support, chief firewood scrap collector and clean up crew.  We had bags and bags of cedar chips and shavings to deal with all the time!

TaDa.  Each piece is incredibly smooth.  It smells amazing too!

You can see that we're working on the 3rd piece here while the first two rested to the left.

Three of out of four pieces were finished by early March 2020.  We then took a break from everything else to build our raised beds and plant our little veggie garden. There are a couple of separate blogs on our summer of loving our garden if you're interested. 

By late August piece four was also finished to the same degree as the three other pieces.  It's the one facing the dining room.  Aren't they all beautiful! 

Of course, we had to make a rather big shelf to accommodate all four pieces while they continue to dry.

They will now stay on their shelves until it's time for phase two - initial fitting of all four pieces in the house in position to create our closet.  Too technical to get into here but it will be a one of a kind piece for sure. Not sure when that will be but we'll let you know!

And what about all those cedar chips...they made a great cedar path!

This will help with the weeds and it looks great!  This is also one of the deer highways.

As we publish this we have also experienced dense smoke day after day from the forest fires in Washington, Oregon and California.  We can't see anything except trees on our property. It looks like fog but it never leaves and sure smells of smoke.  Having spent time housesitting in Northern California in 2018, we are somewhat familiar with their geography and we drove some of the highways that were shut down recently because of the fires.  We are so fortunate to live where we live... in a rainforest and we hope that it keeps raining often so we will never ever experience anything like those horrific, destructive fires south of us.   We feel for those impacted.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay peaceful.

Until til next time....

Tricia and Jim Bowen