Historic Avila Hall wood turned into eye-catching art – NiagaraFallsReview.ca

The fact Stephanie and Samantha Iannacchino have made a career out of working with wood shouldn’t be all that surprising: After all, the Niagara Falls sisters grew up watching their dad Sam doing the same thing with the picture-framing business he still runs.

But instead of using new wood to make frames, the siblings make a point of repurposing old wood that would otherwise likely end up in a landfill and turning it into eye-catching, original art.

Their latest venture involves reclaiming wood from the historic Avila Hall at the Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls and painstakingly turning it into art that will live on on people’s walls for generations to come.

The sisters, whose company is called Lumberchino, actually operate out of the shop they hung around in as kids, watching their dad work.

Stephanie said she and Samantha wanted to create art from wood for their own bedroom walls. “(But) we had no woodworking experience at the time,” she said. “So we looped in our dad; he’s so handy we knew he’d be able to do it.”

The finished mosaic artwork caught the attention of friends and family, so the sisters started using reclaimed frames their dad had, stripping down the wood to make their first pieces of art.

“When we first started our business model we had to decide to use new wood or reclaimed wood,” said Stephanie. “We decided to keep going down that (reclaimed wood) route and finding as much wood as we could.”

Then a few months ago, Samantha said a friend of hers, whose dad owns a local construction and demolition company, called to ask if she was interested in old wood from the Avila Hall demolition project at Mount Carmel.

The Mount Carmel Monastery applied to the city to demolish the 83-year-old building on Stanley Avenue. Although it has a rich religious history, the monastery board told the city the building’s condition had deteriorated badly and would have required millions of dollars to bring it up to proper standards.

“I said ‘for sure we would’ ” want the wood, said Samantha. “Stephanie and I put on our hard hats and grabbed our crowbars and went to the construction site and started taking floors and walls apart. We brought it back to our shop and started working on it.”

Working with old wood is no easy task, said Samantha.

“It’s very time-consuming, from going to get the wood, to yanking out all the nails, to planing it down, to painting and staining,” said Samantha. “Then we have to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

But it’s worth the effort, she said.

“The wood is really old and super dry so it gives the pieces a lot of character.”

The sisters created four pieces of art so far from Avila, but have more wood to keep on making pieces. They plan to donate a portion of the proceeds from sale of the art pieces to Mount Carmel.

For more information visit https://lumberchino.com. 

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