Massive timber fashioned into breakfast bar

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In the midst of all the madness of racing to complete our house, I find myself failing to stop and take in the really cool things. When I received images from Eastvold Custom Woodwork of my reclaimed timber breakfast bar being cut down to size, it was a wonderful moment.

The original timber piece was just a bit over 26 feet long, 4 inches thick and 18 inches wide. The final breakfast bar will be 15 feet long and roughly the same thickness and width, with a 3-foot-tall section that runs from the floor to support the end of the bar, forming an "L" shape.

Duluth Timber Co. salvaged the piece from a 1940s Boeing Aircraft hangar in a little town near Seattle. Cutting a monstrous piece of wood like this requires a special blade, and it was crucial that we get a perfect cut as we had planned to run the grain of the piece down the length of the bar and have it align with the vertical piece that would act as the support.

Although it was our request that we have a long continuous bar on one side of our kitchen, I don't think that we truly grasped how remarkable in size such a piece would be until we saw photos of the Eastvold crew working together to execute a single cut on this stunning piece of wood.

Jason Hammond is at hammond@mojosolo.com.