Tree House
Salvaged lumber from diseased butternut trees finds a second life in one workworker's home.
(Eric Roth)Parker Nichols doesn't cut down healthy trees. Yet his company, Vermont WildWoods, crafts flooring, cabinet panels, and furniture from local butternut wood. How can that be? "Starting in the 1980s," he says, "butternut trees in Vermont started to get sick and die." Nichols, while felling some diseased trees on family land, saw an opportunity to use the salvaged wood.
"The streaking and holes this fungus creates are actually very beautiful," he says. "The wood has a gorgeous aged, antique look to it." He's not the only one who thinks so: Resorts and retailers around the country have commissioned pieces. The Stowe Mountain Lodge, which is slated to open next month in Stowe, Vermont, will have a restaurant host stand, side tables for the spa, and cocktail tables for the bar all made from salvaged wood. "Clear wood with no knots isn't the only thing designers want any more," Nichols says.
Clearly. His home - where he lives with his wife, Mimi Arnstein, an organic farmer - is a showcase for the wood. In the living room, the floor is made from wide butternut planks, and the coffee table is constructed of a "very wormy" piece, Nichols says. He also gave an old Shaker table a new top and used butternut for the trim around the windows.
The dining room features trim and a table made of butternut, as well as an asymmetrical butternut bowl that sits in the center of the table. In the bedroom, the window trim and the bed's headboard and footboard are butternut. And in the kitchen, Nichols shows off his newest innovation: cabinet fronts made from thin, wormy panels laminated between sheets of glass. "These are one of the things getting the most attention from the high-end resorts," he says, then pauses and laughs. "And, yes, these are the pieces we're doing for the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City." It seems even Donald Trump appreciates salvaged butternut from Vermont.
Christie Matheson is the author of Green Chic:Saving the Eath in Style. Send comments to designing@globe.com.
