TO Stores with locally made, repurposed furniture: Conscious furniture designers know you don’t have to axe a living tree to make a table. Some of the best wood around can be repurposed from old barns, piers, warehouses, houses, bleechers and bowling alleys… you name it! Forever Interiors (in the Junction) owner Martin Scott salvages the wooden skeletons from old churches and renoed houses within five kilomoters of his store to make incredible tables. He converts old doors into beautiful cabinets, kitchen islands or blackboards. Scott even makes use of his leftovers by making patchwork block tables.

MADE (on Dundas West) offers a different take on found pieces. They work with high profile designers like the Brothers Dressler and house everything from spliced metal jewelry to restored vintage chairs. Many of the chairs are restored by recovering the fabric and restoring with new legs made from fallen branches or driftwood.

Lubo (also situated on Dundas West) crafts furniture from demolished buildings and barns. Remember the cedar pier that lined Toronto’s orginal shoreline (which was dug up to construct condo’s)? Well, Lubo’s staff has made stools from heritage wood. They even made benches from the John Abell factory that was, you guessed it, torn down for more condos.

Other sources include Salvage Interiors, Canadian Salvaged Timber, or Urban Tree Salvage which uses trees cut down from right here in the GTA. As well, there’s cityandnorth.com, which makes more affordable custome stuff, and loft dweller fave Hardware Interiors in Leslieville. Or Post and Beam, which focuses on architectural reclamation.

Read more of the article online at Now Mag.