Yakisugi is a Japanese method of preserving timber by charring it. The name is literal: yaki is to burn, sugi is Japanese cedar. Boards were charred on one face, cooled, brushed back and oiled, then used as exterior cladding - where the burnt layer resisted rot, insects and, counterintuitively, fire. You may know it as shou sugi ban. That's the same three characters read a different way, and it stuck in the West even though it isn't what the technique is called in Japan. Why

When the owners decided to move back to South Africa, they bought and renovated an old house in Rondebosch. Most of what comes out of a renovation like that goes straight into a skip. Cornices, doors, floorboards - lifted, stacked, and carted off before the new work starts. The parquet came up with everything else. They didn't want to throw it away. They wanted to make something out of it instead. 130 blocks, and what was on the back of them What we took delivery of was not a