March 28, 2024
Old wood from Gaston mills find new purpose with Chronicle Millworks
Eric Kessler and Brian Hackett pose together inside Chronicle Millworks on Ledford Drive in Gastonia Thursday morning, April 7, 2022.

Brian Hackett and Eric Kessler of Chronicle Millworks want to use their custom household furniture organization to share Gaston County’s mill background via customizing local mill wood.

“There is certainly a history to this wooden we’re doing work with and we really like hearing individuals share tales about it when they do the job with us,” stated Hackett, the founder of Chronicle Millworks.

Hackett commenced Chronicle Millworks, a tailor made home furniture organization, in 2015 with the purpose to use reclaimed wooden from local mills to generate customized home furnishings regionally. 

Much of the wood employed by the business will come from the Chronicle Mill which opened in 1904 along Catawba Street in Belmont. 

During that time, the mill operated as a cotton processing textile mill. The mill will now be redeveloped into more than 200 luxurious flats with exercise, pool and lounge facilities. 

Brian Hackett works on a new project inside Chronicle Millworks on Ledford Drive in Gastonia Thursday morning, April 7, 2022.

“Just after John Church bought the Chronicle Mill in 2014, there was a need to have for anything to be carried out with all this aged wooden while the mill is getting repurposed,” reported Hackett. “We want to be a element of preserving the heritage of it.”

Hackett and Kessler just take the 500-calendar year-aged heart pine wood beams and hard-rock maple floorboards from the Loray and Chronicle Mills and turn them into personalized stools, kitchen area tables, barn doors, charcuterie boards and far more.