RECLAIMING VANCOUVER’S PAST
Furniture-maker brings new life to recycled wood in works both rustic and refined
Furniture-maker Brooke Wingrove says he’s always made things, growing up with a handy father, and with the requisite tools on hand to experiment. But when he returned to Vancouver from London in 2006 and decided to furnish his entire apartment with furniture he built, as opposed to buying, his side hobby took on a life of its own.
In 2011, Wingrove launched Vancouver Reclaimed, which specializes in furniture and finishings made from reclaimed wood sourced from around Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, and learned how passionate people are about using this material.
“I like using reclaimed wood because I like the look of it,” says Wingrove. “That’s the main thing for me, and then second is using a recycled product. But (for) most people that contact me, it’s the recycling of the wood that’s the main interest for them. They always comment that it saves cutting other trees down, and they love the fact that it’s been in a Vancouver building and now it’s in their house.”
Wingrove says he mainly uses Douglas fir and some oak, finding cedar to be a little soft, and that most of it was “probably old floor joists” that have been milled into barn boards. This works well for the feature walls that are popular with his clients.
“It just goes on raw on the wall,” he says. “It doesn’t generally have a finish to it. For me, I think finishes take away from the look.”
Sliding barn doors made from reclaimed wood are also popular, Wingrove says, as they act as a feature in the home and are also functional, acting as room dividers.
He says industrial-style furniture is still very popular with people in the area, such as one of his Port Moody clients Yellow Dog Brewing Company. He did tables and shelving for them, adding that the look has changed quite a bit in the past five years.
“It’s a bit more modern and refined now, and not this huge big chunky furniture anymore.”
Companies like Restoration Hardware really sparked the industrial furniture trend in the early 2000s, Wingrove says, but the look has been pared back to be much cleaner looking.
One of the benefits of doing custom work, says Wingrove, is that he can consult and advise his customers on what works and what doesn’t in furniture design, with function and comfort top of mind.
“I’ve built a lot of dining tables, and I just love a simple farmhouse table, with the legs in the corner,” he says. “A lot of these tables that are so modern, they have these U-shaped legs that people want, and I try to put people off because they’re right in the middle of where people’s legs are. The basic farmhouse table can be made modern with very clean looking wood.”
The reclaimed materials that Wingrove uses are also being celebrated in their original designs around Vancouver, such as in the Gastown showroom of high-end home furnishings company Avenue Road, which opened in February.
Notes the architect who designed the space, Abraham Chan of Toronto’s ACDO: “We were particularly drawn to the building ’s existing Douglas fir columns and beams. We instantly wanted to find a way to integrate them with our design, and we felt that these elements captured the spirit of Vancouver’s older architecture, as well as the materials that are native to the province.”