3 ideas on how to use short cladding board lengths

How can you make the most of short timber cladding boards?

If you’re looking to make the best of your available resources, save money and avoid wasting wood, we have a few ideas for you to consider that will add value to your project:

1. Use for trims, edges and window frames

Shorter timber cladding boards can be put to good use in areas where the full length isn’t necessary.

Even for building projects that use longer board lengths to cover the majority of the area, there will always be spaces – around windows, doors, balconies, etc – that require these smaller pieces.

This makes purchasing a mix of longer and shorter lengths a far better option than using more resources, both money and time, for purchasing only long boards and cutting them down to size on-site.

2. Make them a key feature of your design

Rather than trying to find uses for shorter boards that will involve them being tucked away, why not make them into a statement?

Wood is a natural material and each board has slightly different colouring and grain no matter how long the boards are. True, the natural look of wood on shorter cladding boards makes a more striking effect.

If you are worried about the installation of short cladding boards, we’ve got you covered! With our smart installation systems, cladding a building with shorter boards is just as easy.

3. Use the boards in a herringbone or chevron pattern

Cladding doesn’t always have to be horizontal or vertical – diagonal lines look fantastic, but such a design is guaranteed to require a lot of shorter boards around the edges. Diagonal timber cladding gives the building a visually interesting look as it elongates the building.

The herringbone and chevron patterns are a classic for floors and tiles, but timber can also give a unique wow effect to exteriors when used this way.

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Extra idea: Get creative and find unique solutions

Don’t forget that wood is an extremely versatile material, so you don’t have to restrict its use to your construction projects – smaller pieces can come in handy for a vast range of purposes, including furniture, ornaments and home décor.

For a bit of inspiration, check out these fetching chairs that were designed especially for the Tallinn Architecture Biennale’s lounge. Your leftover cladding boards can also be used to make benches, shelves and any other small furniture pieces you can imagine – the possibilities are virtually endless!

Sustainability at Thermory – how does Thermory minimize wastage of short boards?

Ending up with short cladding boards is inevitable – this is simply down to the way the boards are produced. Because wood is natural the pieces are never uniform, and our quality control process requires us to remove parts that are visually or structurally compromised, for example by cracks or larger branches along the length of the boards. We don’t want to let these pieces go to waste though, and we’re committed to finding ways to make good use of them.

As it happens, we do have a few tricks up our sleeves – for example, we’ve created our stunning Herringbone and QuickDeck decking modules, which give the shorter panels a new life, as do some of our sauna products.

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