The Discovery
In July 2025, we received a call from a landowner in Pittsylvania County who had inherited a 40-acre tobacco farm outside Danville. The property included three outbuildings, one of which was a large flue-cured tobacco barn dating to the early 1920s. The owner had no use for the barn and was planning to have it pushed over and burned — a tragically common fate for these historic structures.
When our scout visited the site, he found a remarkably intact timber-frame structure measuring roughly 20 feet by 32 feet with 16-foot sidewalls. The roof had partially collapsed on one end, but the main frame — built from hand-hewn heart pine posts and white oak braces — was sound. The interior tier poles, used to hang tobacco leaves for curing, were made from local American chestnut, a species functionally extinct since the chestnut blight of the early 1900s.
Planning the Deconstruction
Salvaging a structure like this is not demolition — it is careful, methodical deconstruction, working in reverse order from how the building was originally assembled. Before we touched a single board, our team spent two days documenting the structure: measuring timbers, photographing joinery details, tagging each major structural member, and creating a deconstruction sequence plan.
Safety assessment came first. We checked for hazardous materials (none found — tobacco barns of this era were not treated with creosote or other preservatives), evaluated structural stability, and identified our rigging points for lowering heavy timbers safely.
Equipment and Crew
The job required a four-person crew working over five days. Our equipment included a compact telehandler with fork and boom attachments, a portable sawmill for on-site processing of oversized timbers, chainsaw mills for initial rough cutting, pry bars, nail pullers, and a flatbed trailer for transport back to our Virginia Beach facility.
The Salvage Process
Day 1-2: Roof and Cladding
We started from the top, removing the remaining metal roofing panels (set aside for recycling) and then the roof purlins and rafters. The rafters were 2x6 heart pine, rough-sawn and still showing the original circular saw marks from a local mill. Despite a century of exposure through the damaged roof, the wood tested at only 15% moisture content in the protected areas — a testament to heart pine's natural durability.
The vertical board siding was heart pine as well, with widths ranging from 8 to 14 inches. We removed each board individually, pulling nails as we went. About 70% of the siding was salvageable; the remainder had ground-contact rot at the base or severe weathering that had eroded the face beyond usable thickness.
Day 3-4: Timber Frame
With the skin removed, the skeleton of the barn was fully exposed. The main posts were 8x8 heart pine, hand-hewn with a broadaxe and still bearing the characteristic scalloped tool marks. The connecting girts and plates were 6x8 and 6x10, joined with mortise-and-tenon joinery secured by oak pegs.
Disassembling timber-frame joints requires patience. We used a combination of heavy mallets, drift pins, and careful prying to separate the joints without splitting the tenons. Each joint was numbered and mapped so that a future builder could reassemble the frame if desired.
The white oak knee braces and diagonal bracing members were in excellent condition — white oak's natural tyloses make it highly resistant to moisture penetration, and these braces had been protected from direct weather by the building envelope.
Day 5: Chestnut Recovery and Cleanup
The interior tier poles were our most exciting find. We recovered 47 American chestnut poles ranging from 3 to 5 inches in diameter and 10 to 16 feet in length. While too small for structural use, these poles represent an irreplaceable resource. American chestnut lumber is extraordinarily rare — the blight that swept through Eastern forests in the early 20th century killed an estimated 4 billion trees, and the species has never recovered at commercial scale.
We also salvaged the barn's foundation stones (local fieldstone) and several pieces of hand-forged iron hardware, including strap hinges and a door latch that our blacksmith partner dated to the late 19th century.
By the Numbers
- Total board feet recovered: approximately 8,400
- Heart pine: 5,200 board feet (posts, rafters, siding, purlins)
- White oak: 2,100 board feet (braces, girts, sills)
- American chestnut: approximately 1,100 board feet (tier poles, miscellaneous)
- Salvage rate: 78% of total structural wood in the building
- Landfill diversion: approximately 12 tons of wood saved from burning or burial
What Happens Next
Back at our Virginia Beach facility, the lumber goes through our standard reclaimed wood processing pipeline: de-nailing with metal detectors and hand inspection, kiln drying to 8% moisture content, and re-sawing or planing to customer specifications. The heart pine timbers are available as-is for exposed beam applications or can be resawn into flooring, paneling, and dimensional lumber.
The chestnut poles are being carefully air-dried and will be offered as specialty stock for furniture makers, turners, and artisans. Due to the extreme rarity of the species, we expect strong interest from woodworkers who may never have another opportunity to work with genuine American chestnut.
Projects like this are the heart of what we do at Norfolk Lumber. Every old barn, warehouse, and factory contains materials that took nature centuries to produce. Our job is to give those materials a second life — and to make sure their stories continue.