Reclaimed and Second-Hand Material Questions Checklist

Ask exactly how much material exists, in the unit the installer will work in, and whether the seller has counted it or is estimating.

Counted and estimated are very different answers, and the difference tends to appear only when the last part of the job is being laid.

Ask whether any more of the same material could ever be obtained, from this seller or anywhere else, and record the answer as given.

For most reclaimed material the honest answer is no, and building the scheme around that answer is different from hoping otherwise.

Ask where the material came from and what it was doing before, and write down whatever the seller can and cannot tell you.

Provenance explains a great deal about condition and consistency, and the gaps in the story are as informative as the story.

Ask whether the whole quantity came from a single source at a single time, or has been gathered from several.

Material gathered from several sources will not match itself, which changes the scheme rather than merely the price.

Ask what proportion of the quantity the seller expects to be unusable, and how they arrived at that expectation.

Every reclaimed batch carries loss, and a seller who has never been asked this is telling you something by the answer.

Ask your installer how much material they would want available for this job, and put that number against what the seller has.

An installer allows for cutting, waste and matching, and their figure is usually larger than an owner's calculation from an area.

Ask who has examined the material, what they were looking for, and whether anything was written down at the time.

The answer is frequently that nobody has, which is worth knowing before rather than after the material is in your possession.

Whether reclaimed material is sound and suitable for a given use is for a qualified professional to establish; a seller's description is not an assessment.

Go and see the material in person rather than from photographs, and look at pieces from the middle and bottom of a stack as well as the top.

Reclaimed stacks are sorted, deliberately or not, and the visible face rarely represents what is underneath it.

Photograph a spread of pieces including the worst ones you can find, and keep those photographs with the record of what you were told.

The worst pieces are the ones that determine how much of the batch is usable, and they are the ones sellers photograph least.

Ask how much the material varies across the quantity in colour, size, thickness and wear, and see that variation rather than hearing about it.

Variation is often the point of reclaimed material, but the amount of it has to be acceptable to whoever will live with the result.

Ask whether you can take a few representative pieces away, and show them to your installer and to anyone else deciding.

A few pieces in the actual room under the actual light settles more disagreements than any amount of discussion.

Ask what about the material cannot be judged by looking at it, and who would be able to say more about it.

Framing the question this way produces a much more honest answer than asking whether the material is in good condition.

Ask what coatings, paints, treatments or finishes are on the material, when they were applied, and whether anybody knows what they are.

The answer is often unknown, and unknown is the answer that has to be passed to a professional rather than worked around.

Do not attempt to identify any old coating, treatment or substance yourself. Ask an appropriately qualified professional before any material is cut, sanded or burned.

Ask whether fixings, nails, screws, cramps or fragments of mortar remain in the material, who removes them, and whether that work sits in anybody's scope.

Removing fixings is slow work that nobody has priced unless it was discussed, and it damages tools if it is missed.

Ask whether any of the material has been repaired, filled or altered before, and whether that is visible or not.

Earlier repairs behave differently from the material around them and are frequently only discovered during preparation.

Photograph anything on or in the material that you cannot identify, and keep the photographs to show to a qualified professional.

Recording rather than investigating is the correct action here, and a photograph is enough to start the right conversation.

If anything about a material is unknown, treat it as unknown and ask a qualified professional; do not proceed on an assumption.

Ask how the material was taken out of wherever it came from, and whether it was removed carefully or recovered from demolition.

How material was removed explains most of the damage in a batch and predicts what the usable proportion will be.

Ask where the material has been stored since it was removed, in what conditions, for how long, and whether it has been moved in that time.

Material stored outdoors and material stored under cover arrive in different conditions regardless of how they started.

Ask your installer what preparation this material would need before it could be used, and get the answer before you buy rather than after.

An installer seeing material for the first time on the day of installation is the most common way a reclaimed scheme goes wrong.

Establish who carries out the preparation — the seller, the installer, a separate specialist or you — and get that written into the scope.

This is the item most likely to fall between parties, because each assumes it belongs to somebody else.

Ask where the preparation would happen, since it usually needs space, produces waste and cannot always be done on site.

Preparation space is rarely considered until the material arrives and there is nowhere to lay it out.

Ask what preparation does to the appearance of the material, and see a prepared piece alongside an unprepared one before deciding.

Cleaning, sanding or cutting can remove the quality that made the material attractive, which is better discovered on one piece.

Ask what waste the preparation produces, how much of it there is, how it is taken away, and whether any of it needs particular arrangements.

Waste from old material is not always ordinary waste, and the question belongs before the work rather than during it.

How waste from old material must be handled depends on what is in it; confirm locally and ask a qualified professional before assuming it is ordinary.

Ask at what point in the programme preparation has to happen, and what else in the job is waiting on it.

Preparation sits between purchase and installation and is the stage most likely to be omitted from a programme entirely.

Ask the seller to describe in writing what the material is, how much there is, and what condition it is in, in their own words.

A written description is the only fixed point in a reclaimed transaction, and asking for one is entirely ordinary.

Ask what happens if the material turns out not to match the description once you have it, and record the answer.

How a seller answers this tells you more about the transaction than anything else you can ask them.

Ask whether any of the material can be returned or exchanged, and under what circumstances, before agreeing to take it.

Frequently nothing can be, which is a reasonable position and one to know about rather than discover.

Ask the seller directly what they are not able to tell you about the material, and write that answer down as carefully as the rest.

This question produces the most useful sentences in the whole conversation and is very rarely asked.

Keep every message, description and photograph from the seller together with the date, rather than relying on a conversation.

Reclaimed transactions happen quickly and informally, and the record is what lets anybody revisit them sensibly.

Take any question about what a seller is obliged to do to a qualified adviser rather than forming a view from the conversation.

What applies varies by transaction and by location, and it is not something a checklist or a seller can settle for you.

What any seller is obliged to provide must be confirmed with a qualified adviser and locally; nothing here indicates what applies.

Ask who loads the material, who transports it, and whether the seller handles either of those, before you agree to buy anything.

Reclaimed material is heavy and awkward, and collection is regularly assumed to be included when it is not.

Decide where the material will be stored until it is needed, and check that place is actually available for that whole period.

Material bought early has to live somewhere, and a garage or a room that is also needed for something else is not storage.

Ask the seller and your installer how the material should be kept while it waits, and whether your intended place would suit it.

Storage conditions change some materials considerably, and the question is easy to ask and hard to correct afterwards.

Work out how long the material has to be stored before it is needed, and whether buying it later would be possible at all.

The whole reason reclaimed material is bought early is that it may not be there later, which is worth naming explicitly.

Ask how the material gets from where it is stored into the room where it is used, and who moves it.

Moving heavy material through a finished house is a job in itself and is rarely in anybody's scope.

Look at the material again shortly before installation begins, and tell the installer straight away if anything has changed while it was stored.

Material that has moved, marked or deteriorated in storage is better discovered before the installer arrives than on the day.

Decide before buying what the scheme does if the material runs short, and write that decision down alongside the purchase.

This decision taken calmly in advance is a design choice; the same decision taken mid-installation is damage limitation.

Identify in advance which parts of the scheme could be finished in something else without it looking like a mistake.

A border, a threshold, a less visible room or a deliberate change of material are all easier to plan than to improvise.

Ask the installer to set the material out dry before fixing anything, so the whole quantity is seen against the whole area.

This is the moment a shortfall becomes visible while it is still cheap to respond to, and it costs a few hours.

Decide in advance which part of the scheme gets the best of the material and which can take the rest, rather than leaving it to the installer.

Somebody will make this decision during installation whether or not you were involved, and it is easily made in advance.

Decide how much material to hold back for future repairs, and keep it separately from the material being used.

With reclaimed material there is no later source at all, so anything not held back deliberately is gone for good.

Write down what the material is, where it came from and where the spares are kept, and leave that record with the property.

Whoever repairs this in years to come will have no other way of knowing, and the information disappears with the household otherwise.