Ahmad Khreshi of Home Perfection Contracting is no stranger to building with nature in mind. He’s green certified and is “always recycling and reusing” whenever possible. “I hate waste. I hate cutting trees,” Khreshi tells REMODELING. So, when he and his team set to work remodeling a home in Arlington, Va., he made sure to save wood whenever he could.
Khreshi and his team stripped the existing structure to the bones and rebuilt and expanded the home, including adding a second floor. In the process, Khreshi saved much of the wood from the old home to create statement features in several rooms.
The pine wood featured on this 18-foot-high wall is reclaimed from the home's old roof structure. After being exposed to heat for 70+ years, the wood had changed color. "It was very unique," Khreshi says. The team planed the wood to different thicknesses to reveal the color variations between the weathered top wood and the new wood below the surface before adhering the planks to the wall. To further accent the color variation, the team embedded LED lights in the planks.
Khreshi and his team created this ceiling medallion, featured in the dining room, from the home's old hardwood floors. The three colors represent the hardwood's journey from floor to ceiling. The light tan is sanded, bare oak. The golden color is the floor's original stain color. The ebony-stained oak is the same color the team used on the floors in the new house.
Don't let this ceiling fool you; it's not actually a skylight. During demolition, Khreshi decided to reuse the home's old, sturdy wooden windows and told his crew, "Let's make art out of this." The team created this recessed ceiling in the library using the windows as a frame for the faux sky. They installed hidden LED lights so that the light shines above the old windows and back down into the room, mimicking the effect of a skylight. The crew attached hinges to the windows so that homeowners are able to open the windows and change out the LEDs.
The final piece of reclaimed wood is a slab of maple used as a countertop in the kitchen. It is not from the original house, but was created from a maple tree that had been cut down for construction. Khreshi got this maple slab from a green building supplier in Maryland that reclaimed the tree and cut it into slabs for use in future projects.
