Glen and Karen Duncan’s Woodstone Estates outdoor kitchen

Antique bricks (8,387 of them). I spent a few summer afternoons under a beach umbrella with my children, Taylor and Hillary, chipping away century-old horsehair mortar off bricks from chimneys, piers and houses all along the Mississippi River. We have all developed an appreciation for vernacular architecture.

Beams. When sanding and cutting these old planks and beams, I saw the original awl marks, wooden pegs and rusty square nails used by long-gone craftsmen. We learned from an old-timer and salvager that “Good wood has two lives.”

Fireplace and mantle. If the kitchen is the heart of a home, the fireplace is the heart of an outdoor kitchen. While reading my “other Bible,” Louisiana Houses of A. Hays Town, I saw a mantle that would be perfect for our fireplace, and Glen made ours from an antique cypress beam. We have warm memories of cold evenings in front of the fire with family and friends.

Cabinets. Hidden behind the weathered siding of a 100-plus-year-old shotgun house on Hickory Street, we discovered cypress planks up to 18 inches wide. Each cabinet door and drawer front is made from a single plank. One wall plank we saved was crafted from a piece of shipping crate still marked “Baton Rouge, La” in hand-painted letters. Maybe wood has three lives.

Antique cypress shutters. Karen acquired these shutters from a new next-door neighbor as he was cleaning out his attic. Originally part of the former owner’s childhood home in Algiers Point, they ended up in our attic—for years. Karen knew long before we ever thought of this project that that they would end up on our windows one day.