John Tuttle’s Natchez home is less than 10 years old, but it has the heart of an antebellum plantation.

Tuttle, after hitting some hard financial times, vowed to rebuild his life, and he did so literally with the wood from demolished antebellum structures from the Huntley Plantation in Jefferson County.

Tuttle’s new dream home is built almost exclusively from wood salvaged from the Huntley Plantation and other old buildings that have been torn down. He also salvaged the wood from the old Adams County barn that was more than 100 years old when it was torn down.

The only exception is the ceiling in the open living area.

“I wanted it to have a uniformed look so I bought the wood for it,” Tuttle said.

Tuttle, a professional painter, had never attempted a construction project before setting out to build the house he now calls home from the ground up.

“I did it all basically by myself,” Tuttle said. “All I’ve got tied up in it is electrical and plumbing. And I had some help framing it up.”

After the frame of the house went up, Tuttle got to work filling in the inside with a open living-dining-kitchen area, a bathroom and a lofted bedroom.

The floor, walls and cabinets of the room are made from the wood salvaged at Huntley Plantation and the brick fireplace is covered with brick from the plantation.

“There is every type of wood imaginable in here — hickory, cedar, sassafrass,” Tuttle said.

Even the kitchen sink in the kitchen has been recycled wood. It is made from the trunk of an old tree that he hollowed out and finished.

“It was too big and too beautiful to just throw away, so I thought I’d make a sink out of it,” Tuttle said. “I just got the idea in my head.”

And that is how all of his other ideas got started too.

“I didn’t have any blue prints or plans or anything,” Tuttle said. “It was just in my head.”

And while he was working on building his house, he decided to try his hand at something else — furniture building. His first creation was a king-sized bed in the house’s master suite, and of course, it is constructed out of old lumber.

“My wife asked me to build her a king-sized bed and that’s what I did,” Tuttle said. “I was surprised at how nice it came out.”

Tuttle has also built his wife a coffee table, a CD storage case, an entertainment center, decorative baskets and is currently working on a dining room table.

He has also done decorative carving on doors and other decorative accents and does much of his work with hand chisels.

“If I used a Dremel it would be going so fast it would be easy to slip and mess up,” Tuttle said. “Doing everything by hand is just easier and more precise.”

While the majority of the house is made from old wood and building products, there are parts of it that are made from new products like slate floor tiles and a mosaic stone countertop, but none of it is paid for.

“It was thrown away at construction sites,” Tuttle said. “I’ll go Dumpster diving to save it.”

And he’s always on the lookout for discarded supplies and crumbling houses to add to his extensive collection of building products.

“When I’m out driving in the country and see a house that is practically falling down, I always try to find out who owns it and ask if I can tear it down for them,” Tuttle said.

Tuttle said he has good reason for wanting to use old lumber in his projects. He said the quality is better than most of the lumber he finds today.

“There isn’t as much moisture in it,” he said. “In most cases today, lumber is in such demand that it can’t dry long enough. That’s not always the case but most of the time it is.”

He keeps his finds in a workshop behind his house so that the wood is close by when an idea strikes.

“You can never have too much,” Tuttle said.

He said he already has one project in mind — a large wooden bathtub.

“I’ve just got to figure it out in my head,” he said.

Although he had no construction experience when he started the project, Tuttle has been able to accomplish his goal and is now living in the completed portion of the home with his wife, Barbara. He is still working to complete a second wing of the home, which will have a second kitchen, living area, dining room and the already completed master bedroom suite.

And like the rest of his house, he’s doing it on his own and one step at a time.

“To do all the that I say I’m going to do and all that my wife wants me to do, I figure I’ll have to live until I’m 104,” Tuttle said. “I’ve got that much of a honey-do list.”