Lumber expensive and poor quality

outlander

outlander

Member
Location
southern Arizona
My city does not have a local lumber yard anymore. Home Depot or Lowes are the only options.

Bought some lumber at Lowes for a small back porch with stairs. It was partially damp, not cut very true, slightly warped with a lot of blemishes, knots and some splitting. Did my best to hand pick better pieces, but not very successfully. Checked out Home Depot also and the lumber was just as crappy.

$350 for a 4x4 porch with handrail and stairs :(

I wonder if this kind of poor quality lumber is used in new house construction?
 
You are not alone! The quality of lumber just keeps getting worse. The local lumber yard (Ace Hardware) pieces are sometimes marked with South American countries' labels. Sometimes Canadian.

I ordered some rough cut pieces from a local mill. 8-10" of the ends were cracked through. Luckily, I needed about 5' lengths and the shortest they will cut is 8' so I was able to cut off those bad ends.

I dread the process, going through dozens of boards trying to find one that is flat, straight, and few knot holes.

One needs a table saw and planer, that's for sure.
 
My son is in construction, and when I need lumber, he'll bring me some from the site he's working at. He only takes what he knows will be discarded; they always order quite a bit more than they'll use.

"I wonder if this kind of poor quality lumber is used in new house construction?" - @outlander

Most of it is much better quality. And if you literally go to a construction site and ask if you can have some "discard," they'll often let you just take some. Especially if you're driving a truck. After all, if you take it, it's that much less they have to remove from the site.

They don't all give away lumber, but, especially when they're about done with the "wood part" of a project, I'd say a good 50% of them will.
 
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