About us

Antique Beams & Boards LLC (ABB) was founded in early 2006, by Matt Gleckler, upon the idea of preserving the beautiful wood from the area’s many old timber structures. Many of these barns and buildings had outlived their usefulness many years ago and had since fallen into disrepair. What started as a wholesale business to many of the major reclaimed wood distributers across the country, has grown into a major wholesale and retail supplier of reclaimed wood and reclaimed wood products to home owners, architects, mill shops and builders, both commercial and residential, across the country and Canada. ABB carries one of if not the largest inventory of reclaimed hardwoods in the midwest.

Mr. Gleckler holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Toledo and is also a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Charter Holder. In 2003 Gleckler left a career in investment banking to pursue his first entrepreneurial venture, Skye Cinema (www.skyecinema.com), which inevitably led to the founding of ABB.
Skye Cinema is a state-of-the-art, stadium seating, 6 screen movie theatre located in Wauseon Ohio. Matt alone raised over $800,000 in investment capital, secured financing, and self performed a large amount of the actual construction of the project. He and his wife Mindy operate the theatre to this day.
Upon the site where Skye Cinema now sits was a large old barn built in the late 1800’s. Matt marveled at the workmanship that went in to building the barn. Being an avid outdoorsman and amateur arborist (he has over 60 species of tree planted on his property), Matt was also amazed at the number of trees and variety of species that went into the building. Believing there must be a use for this amazing wood, removing the barn was one of the construction tasks Matt personally took on.
A local wood salvager removed the barn and aided in the clean up. Matt enjoyed the process but did not give much thought to the reclaimed wood business until about a year later. Once the theatre was up and running well, Gleckler was restless and looking for another venture to start, one that would keep him outside in jeans and t-shirt, instead of inside in suit and tie. The barn project was the first to come to mind, thus Antique Beams & Boards LLC was founded.
Early on Matt made it an obsession to learn the species of wood he was salvaging. From there the self-schooling went from species to sub-species, characteristics of each, preferred habitat and soil conditions of the living tree, history of the wood and availability today.
Due to the geographically unique aspects of historic Northwest Ohio, ABB salvages good quantities of wood species that are only found sporadically in other areas of the country. Slow growing swamp species of Oak, Ash, and Elm that were present before the farmland was cleared, was used in the construction of the areas barns, mills, and houses.