Y'all Been Checkin' Lumber Prices?

[Jstpssng]

Dang. I sort of naively assumed that lumber prices were coming back down to earth.

Wife wants a she-shack office built this summer. Something simple like 12x20 with a front porch, etc. Can just be 2x10 floor grid, 2x4 walls, 2x8 rafters or such. I didn't realize how much it would cost me! The t&g flooring alone... $62 a sheet right now? c'mon, man.....

They dropped this week...

 

[deezler]

Good. But still, tongue and groove OSB flooring sheets are $66 a PIECE right now?!? Jeeez, man.

I'm gonna start trolling craigslist/materials and FB marketplace for lumber. On a whim I checked craig's yesterday and found a guy selling 10 good sheets of lightly used T&G osb for $22 a sheet instead, DEAL. Gotta move quick, he had a ton of interest.

 

[check]

Geez, I have a bunch of T & G that I’m not using. Maybe I should sell it. Also a bunch of Roxull insulation.

 

[yanmars]

I have on order over $5,000 worth of that insulation but it is still several weeks out from delivery. Even if you had listed it earlier the trip to Ontario would not have worked. Hope the costs of materials slows soon. Higher interest rates could slow building .

 

[JasperFrank]

A neighbor has been building a small secondary house on their property for the past few months. Its been slow going due to the on and off rain situation this spring. The interior is typical 2 X 4, 16 on center, construction. But the rest of the house has me baffled. The exterior walls and trusses are framed with what looks like 6 x 6 timbers held together with bolts and metal straps. They started laying down the roof base yesterday, and they are using horizontal 2 x 6s for the entire roof. Never seen that done before.

 

[MossRoad]

A neighbor has been building a small secondary house on their property for the past few months. Its been slow going due to the on and off rain situation this spring. The interior is typical 2 X 4, 16 on center, construction. But the rest of the house has me baffled. The exterior walls and trusses are framed with what looks like 6 x 6 timbers held together with bolts and metal straps. They started laying down the roof base yesterday, and they are using horizontal 2 x 6s for the entire roof. Never seen that done before.

Our house roof is 1x6 on 16" centers, but it's 100 years old. Maybe 2x6 on 24 is less expensive than plywood or OSB right now, or, the only thing available? Who knows.

 

[MossRoad]

That reminded me of my father's house. The entire house was roofed with X by 6 tongue and groove Douglas fir on 4' centers. I put X because I do not know the thickness. He bought a full train car load of Doug fir and California redwood and had it shipped here to a lumber yard siding. He had an arrangement with the lumber yard owner to sell him the portion of the car that he didn't use at below cost. He saved a bundle. Anyhow, he put the fir through a router and made his own tongue and groove. It was then covered in 3 layers of felt and tar paper, then tar and pea gravel.

From the inside was beautiful. There was a massive ridge beam that he laminated himself (maybe 18" tall by 6 or 8" thick). It ran the entire length of all three legs of the Y shaped house off of a center post. There were 6" wide rafters running up from the walls every 4', to the top of the beam. The beam was about 3' higher than the walls, so it was a low cathedral ceiling. He invented some gusset system and interior/exterior overhangs that he used where the walls met the ceiling. So there was a 2' overhang outside the house and a 2' overhand inside the house, which created a space for indirect lighting to illuminate the ceilings. They made opaque panels to set in the interior overhang bays and man, was it pretty.

Anyhow. Boards for roofing has been around a long time, before plywood was invented. Same thing with flooring.

 

[jyoutz]

Timber stumpage prices have dropped, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to lower finished lumber at the retail market. There’s a fair amount of processing, transportation, and middlemen between the woods and the lumberyard.

 

[MossRoad]

I should note that flat overhangs do not do well in freeze/thaw climates where there is ZERO insulation in the roof, such as my father's. In later years, he designed some foam wedges to take up the flat overhang, and put at least 2" of styrofoam insulation on the top of the roof, covered by OSB and then shingles. He said when he built the house, natural gas was almost free. In the late 70's, not so much. Anyhow, he was an architect and the house was a place to test out materials and techniques. He enjoyed experimentation. A new homeowner might not see that as a plus if they paid for something experimental and unproven.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Timber stumpage prices have dropped, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to lower finished lumber at the retail market. There’s a fair amount of processing, transportation, and middlemen between the woods and the lumberyard.

And fuel cost have gone up while the spot lumber (90 day futures) price change up or down.