The Easters' search for the right boards took them over a year. At one point, their contractor visited an elementary school scheduled for demolition to inspect some of its beams. They ended up buying antique heart pine from Mountain Lumber. The couple is trying to pin down the wood's origin. Mountain Lumber says it has narrowed the sources to a cotton mill in Tennessee, a warehouse in Pittsburgh or a tobacco-drying facility in Richmond.
Old wood is so popular that people are even ordering up new furniture to be built from it.