Reclaimed Redwood Dining Table & Benches

One day while working on fixing up our new home and traveling back and forth between the home improvement store, I noticed a shop nestled behind some trees with stacks of lumber outside. We decided to stop and take a look — and found piles and piles of reclaimed redwood.

Each piece was a vibrant rusted red, with black nail holes from nearly a century of oxidation. We learned from the shop owner that these boards were previously part of a large facility used during World War II as cold storage for soldiers' bodies as they returned from the Pacific. When the building had reached the end of its life, the shop owner acquired these pieces to give them a second life.

Over the next several weeks, we planed the boards, filled in the nail holes with epoxy, sanded, and finished the wood. Ten of these boards now claim a new life as a table and benches for families to gather around, share stories and meals, and build on the multiple centuries-long legacy of a redwood tree in the Sierra Nevada.