Ellen Moorhouse has recently visited Timeless Material Co. Based an hour and a half from Toronto, the ten acre yard is run by the passionate and knowledgable Ken Kieswetter. The piece was written by Moorhouse for Toronto's online news website, The Star.
 
"Ken Kieswetter is as enthusiastic as a kid in a toy store. Only he isn't a kid, and he's on his own company's premises.
 
"Come here!" he says, again and again. And off he goes, up and down the stairs of a remarkable 1870s three-storey barn in Waterloo, now a showroom for salvaged materials. He wants to point out another treasure.
 
Here's a man who loves what he does.
 
Kieswetter and two of his six brothers run three businesses embracing their own version of reduce, reuse, recycle. Kieswetter Demolition deconstructs buildings, many historic, sorting and saving everything reusable. The reclaimed materials are showcased by The Timeless Material Co. in the barn and on its 10-acre site. Timeless Timber Structures Inc. designs, builds and reconstructs, using historic structures and salvaged materials. At a second location in Southampton, the Kieswetters have a timber-frame structure inside a Quonset hut.
 
Right next to the Timeless barn property is the expanding campus of Research In Motion, home to the BlackBerry and a work force of thousands, many of whom no doubt embrace the industrial and rough-hewn aesthetic the Kieswetters can satisfy through their preservation efforts.
 
One of the first items Kieswetter takes me to look at is a photograph of an arts-and-crafts style house in Southampton, designed and built by Timeless Timber Structures. The core is a dismantled and reconstructed 1850 log house. The stone, visible in the generous porch, came from a demolished hospital; the windows, from a 1930s Georgetown house (restored wood windows with storms meet code, Kieswetter says), and the late 18th century entrance, from Quebec.
 
There are more photos of commercial interiors with Timeless fixtures, counters, tables, shelving and materials: Mac Cosmetics, Roots Canada, Terroni Restaurants, Oliffe Meats, Rodney's By Bay, Sweet Grass Flowers.
 
The Kieswetters also assembled a timber barn from four demolished Guelph-area structures for the filming in Toronto of The Recruit (2003), starring Al Pacino. The New Zealand-based director took the barn home with him.
 
We walk to the back of the showroom, passing a 1950s six-foot kitchen unit topped with mint-condition enamel sinks and drain boards.
 
"See this?" he says. "It's Crane." Indeed, inside, on a cupboard door, is the venerable Canadian plumbing fixture company's logo (price: $5,200).
 
We pass a stainless steel cabinet, topped with Douglas fir ($850).
 
"Between me and you, it was a trash can at Waterloo University," says Kieswetter, pleased to have saved something so attractive.
 
At the back of the barn is a section with Farrow & Ball's traditional paint and paper line, displayed on shelving from Kaufman Footwear in Kitchener. A cutting table from the old factory provides a surface.
 
The list of old buildings the Kieswetters have deconstructed or gutted is a who's who of Ontario's industrial past. The most recent casualty was the Kaufman Furniture factory in Collingwood. It yielded old-growth Douglas fir planks and timbers, reclaimed brick, tongue and groove decking, even spruce lumber from more recent additions.
 
Signs line the barn's walls and stairwells, nostalgic reminders of Ontario's grand manufacturing tradition and its entrepreneurs, continued in 21st-century form at RIM next door.
 
You name it, Timeless has it, cleaned and sorted: old plumbing fixtures; church pews; tin ceilings; wood slabs for counters or shelving; a wide selection of flooring materials, from salvaged strip, ideal for patching, to flooring milled from old growth beams and even wine-barrel staves; hardware; trim of all kinds; denailed lumber; windows and doors. Outside, the yard is filled with beams and salvaged stone, brick and bits of industrial machinery.
 
Kieswetter takes me up the stairs to see the intricately carved oak entrance from Waterloo's Globe Furniture Co. Ltd., known for its church interiors. He shows me the stripped pine entry that came from the Queen's Hotel in Owen Sound. He points out how high, straight and true the barn is after 150 years.
 
In the basement, he describes how the limestone foundation was underpinned, the floor lowered and in-floor heating installed. The sprinkler system is hooked to a refurbished pump from a demolished arena, ready for another 60 years of use. The washrooms have recycled wood counters and shed doors on the cubicles. The reception area at the entrance came from an old bank.
 
Kieswetter takes me to what used to be a chicken coop and farrowing shed, outbuildings in dire straights before he and his brothers bought the property. He's looking for an interior designer to rent the 3,500-square-foot studio in the outbuilding, and work with them on projects.
 
When did their business, started by their grandfather, begin emphasizing salvage? It has been a lifelong approach, Kieswetter says, instilled by parents who lived through the Depression and never wasted. "Also, we are big believers in commonsense. If it can be used, keep it."
 
While he takes delight in salvaging our architectural heritage, it angers Kieswetter to see the continuing destruction, most recently in Brantford's downtown. For decades he's been pointing out how "they ripped the heart out of Kitchener."
 
Those who make the decisions just never learn"