June 17, 2011

Recycling - timber and slate


Before we built our house and new cabin we had to fell some of the huge Rose Gums near the edge of the forest. These trees had been planted some 40 years ago as plantation timber, and we wanted to reuse as much of the timber as possible.

We had the trees milled onsite by a mobile Lucas Mill, then sent away for kiln drying and profiling into T&G wall linings and flooring. We planned to use the flooring in our new cottage.

Then last  year we bought a little rental house (and future holiday cottage) in Mount Glorious. Hidden in the garden we found a large quantity of old slate tiles. They didn’t look too great, but we found that it wasn’t hard to clean them up, and beneath the dirt was a lovely range of colours. We thought they would be an excellent choice for the entry and the hearth in the new cottage. 

Rose Gum Cottage now has its Rose Gum floors and slate tiles, and we're pretty pleased with the result.



While the actual economic viability of milling your own timber is debatable, we're now planning all sorts of other uses for the Rose Gum. But both these subjects are for later posts!





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