Lumber
 

Holy high prices!!! :eek: so anyone else doing any projects involving wood? The price of lumber is double this year here anyway, we have a new garden shed to build, and a back deck in very poor shape from previous owner. Not sure the reason wood is crazy expensive and even hard to get. Maybe because of the wild fires?

Same here. I've heard some people say it's because of the fires but those aren't anything new, although it may be part of it. There is a huge construction boom going on right now. Lots of demand for new housing. People are fleeing the cities. I live in a town of around 10,000. There is residential construction going on all over including a couple large apartment complexes. We've never seen anything like that here.

We use Lowe’s for pretty much all of supplies, mostly wood. Was just in there looking at 2x4’s and plywood and the little bit that was there was all junk! Splintered, cracked, warped junk!

Doing a room in the basement and in the month I started 2x4 went from $6.25 to 7.74 ea. It’s nuts. Not to long ago they were 2.25 ea.

For the longest time there was a softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the US. Now they’re begging us to send our lumber down there. We’re happy to oblige. It’s all a matter of supply and demand.

Listening to the home improvement show last weekend they said it’s averaging $24,000 more on materials to build right now or over last year.

Do yourself a favor and go to the nearest lumber supply yard. sometimes their prices are less than home centers. ,and better quality.

Housing boom here in Ohio as well. Inventory at historic lows. Lumber prices up allot . Menards is the largest lumber yard in our area, although we have Home Depot and Lowes too. When I look at 2x4's, one out of 7 or 8 is straight enough to actually use in construction over an 8' length. Quality is marginal and cost is high.

We were planning a deck to replace, enlarge and improve the existing one. Price of wood has us considering manufactured plastic planking.

Heard the 24K number a month ago. It was quoted on an "average" new home build. Was told by a contractor friend by average, that meant a 1800 sq ft one story new home, not sure if that's what average means or not.

I agree 100%. Not only is the lumber better quality, but many times, less expensive.

Sadly, a lot of lumber yards have disappeared. I remember when I was a young'un my Dad would send me to the local yard to get nails. They would sell by the pound and put them in a brown paper bag.... I had to carry the bag with nails sticking out of it.

Memories.
george

Yes we no longer have one in our town, the big box stores closed them up in my area. So either we wait and see if prices drop, or pay up. Just curious if others here are ready to start projects or have one in progress and feeling the sting of higher prices where you live.

Agree....hard to find decent 2x4 studs @ Lowes of HomeDepot that weren't culls. Big difference in price between 2x4 studs in yellow pine or fir (which few seem to have stocked) versus white wood 8 ft studs @ 6.35 a stud.

Bought several 2x4's & quite a bit of soffit board in Feb & early March, replacing some soffits for an elderly owner who is trying to get a house ready for sale. He's sat on it for too long, but with the market on fire, he ought to be able to come out decent with the house as a fixer/upper, needs serious updating inside.

In two weeks I have a select cedar fence to finish in town. Several years ago bought 85 1x6 x 6 ft 3/4" dog eared select cedar boards in the $1.80 a board range. Same boards would run me near $5 a piece today. Have several good used rough hewn cedar 4x4's that are 10 ft long & will get cut down into fence rails, then can blow $10 a pop on more 2x4x 8ft cedar rails.

This has been going on nation wide for about a year. A good friend of mine was going to do some projects similar to MA's...a year ago. He went to the Lowes near him. they had ZERO treated lumber at that time. He got to asking someone in charge, when they'd get some treated lumber back in stock, she said she had NO info, because ALL the Lowe's stores were ALL out of treated lumber!!!

Maybe folks that stayed home, that COULD afford to get projects going, were getting them done???

Nearly every building material has been going up & they're going to continue to go up.

My son & daughter in law bought a new home this week. Closing next month, they're stuck in a lease through July in a nice apt in east Wichita. The several thousand of rent wasted pales in comparison to the amt from materials increases that the builder was going to pass on/ same floorplan & design home that they could have started next month. The market in their price range was extremely tight with many renowned homes needing a lot of work really jacked up in price. Have several other relatives that are moving & each one of them has echoed how tight the market is, homes often selling for much more than listed prices.

Im a contractor, welcome to my world! My quotes are good for a week, all the more my supplier will guarantee me a price. Everything is up. Most of the stuff at HDepot has doubled in the last 6 months. The supply dried up last summer with covid. Deck lumber was near impossible to find. I had one job, customer picked the decking from lowes. They delivered enough to do half the job after a 3 month wait, then once we started they discontinued the balance. Ended up not finishing the job, all worked out in the long run but was very stressful. I wont start anything now until ALL of the material is on site or in my warehouse. Decking is still hard to get. I just ordered doors for a job that in a good time were 1 week. Now they are 6 - 8 weeks. And yes we are swamped with work right now. My brother is in the construction business as well. He lives in Canada and says that they are having the same problems. No supply and high prices. Wildfires have nothing to do with it.

Construction boom plus work shutdowns over the last year due to 'ronas and you've got materials shortage issues. I was having trouble getting treated lumber for my deck last year and watched prices go up $2-4/board over 3 months.

The construction boom is healthy because so many people are finding that we don't need to live within driving distance for most of our jobs anymore what with the internet and Zoom and people are mass-exodus'ing into areas where costs of living were cheaper (but now going up).

Construction seems to be happening everywhere more condos going up perhaps it’s these big housing jobs getting all the wood.

We bought a lot of lumber over the years from different suppliers,for homes and remodeling. Locally we had good local yards that bought good quality lumber. They have closed up. Now 84,Lowes,Home Depot,New Menards coming. They I believe want a certain profit margin. Soo they buy lower quality lumber to get the margin. We have a local family yard O.C. Cluss. We have bought alot from them over 30+ yrs,never had bad studs,joists, including rafters. Maybe one here and there twisted but good quality. Cluss costs more than the others but I will pay the extra. We have used them all except Menards. Reading about them(new store being built 8 miles from me)they say they can beat the box stores prices. Quality?? Like I've said I've looked and bought from the big box stores and 84, there is a difference with a quality yard that buys better grade. My 2cts.

There are sawmills local to me that say they will beat the box stores in pricing for soft wood dimensional lumber. They also sell hardwood dimensional air dried lumber for about the same price that box stores are getting for their twisted, warped, kiln dried white pine crap.

I saw an ad on marketplace that someone had a pile of 4X8 7/16" OSB board for $35 a sheet, I thought that was crazy, until I checked HD and it was $39 a sheet...............:eek:

And I am scheming on building a small house (900 sq ft). Sounds like I can add some $$$ to estimate. FYI, real estate here in Flathead Valley MT is nuts. Almost no houses for sale. Sell same day usually. Lumber doesn't matter, all builders booked a year out. My house increased 100K in a year. My head is spinning. Have 10 unimproved remote acres here that is summer zone only too high and bad road for winter. All parcels gobbled up and it doubled in value in a year. People are buying sight unseen off the internet. I hear stories how it is this way many places, just berserk.

Yes many bidding wars going on over homes. The For Sale sign is barely in the ground 24 hours and offers over asking price are happening. Very strange!

I’m in the middle of gutting and basically rebuilding a rental property. Luckily I bought 80% of my lumber last year, trusses, studs,OSB, ect. But I have had to buy some random supplies as needed. Last year a 2x4 8’ was about $4, now $7.79 each. 3/4” OSB was $22 a year ago, now $38.
A guy this week on one of my building forums said that 3/4” OSB was $105 a sheet by him! How? Who would pay that?

Personally watched the price of 23/32" OSB go from $28 & change to little over $40 & change @ local Lowes in the last two months. Big stacks of it with a price sign right out the contractors entrance. Local small contractors seem to be the ones buying the bulk of it, larger roofing contractors buy in the city.

Over the last 5 years I've been at a residence & heard a few roofers tell 2 homeowners they've got to re-deck a roof with OSB over top of current 1x8 decking because it's "code". Nothing wrong with original decking. I've been up on several local roofs during tearoff's, including two of our own properties, & other than one or two damaged 1x8"s where a tree branch fell & split a piece of decking, the decking was in great shape.

I'm building an addition onto my detached garage. I held up purchasing OSB just a few months back because it was $16 for a 4x8 sheet of 7/16th. Thought it would come down to a more reasonable level when I was ready for it. Well., I need it now and It is $37 a sheet yesterday at Lowes.

My understanding is that because of covid restrictions in the workplace, the lumber producing mills had to cut back in close contact (perhaps causing a cutback in staff) between employees therefore forcing a cutback in product. High demand plus low available supply equal high prices.

If I put a deck on my house, it might just be metal. Who cares if it looks like a car trailer?

I was cleaning out the barn of all my dads junk. I found a perfect, 16ft long 2x12... and thought THIS IS MY RETIREMENT PLAN!!! WOOHOOO!!!!!!

This may not be a completely bad idea. Up until 5 years ago all I did was commercial work. We used metal exclusively for all framing. Piece for piece metal was competitive or even cheaper than wood. One reason was like mentioned in another post, HDepot is home owner driven with guys buying 100 junk studs. Metal studs are bought from a wholesale supplier usually tractor trailer load at a time so prices are really good. Then, metal prices skyrocketed and a metal stud was about twice the price of wood. Since then I have scaled back and do mostly residential and havent touched steel since, but I would be curious to see how the price of that kind of stuff is right now. In reality, my guess its just as high.

You can do all the framing in metal, still use traditional materials on the exterior, AND be rot and termite proof!

Thing is the prices go up, but they never go down. They didn’t jack up prices earlier because although it felt like a boom, it was still a little shaky, even with cheap money. Now they have a captive customer. They also may be charging the crap out of us because they know that a slowdown could just as well happen. I don’t know, but this reminds me of the late 80’s where housing prices were unsustainable and every other cost was through the roof. Wages never kept up.

The deck we have now is not wood, it’s more of a hard plastic not sure of the correct term, maybe composite? But it needs new railings and the old shed we keep the rototiller and garden stuff in is ready to crash.

If I ever build a cabin on the remote land I have up here, it may make sense to set up a field sawmill for lumber. I have lots of larch trees,

I worked for a large builder for over 26 years. During the mid 90's when there was a huge lumber shortage, the owners approached me to ask if I would consider building one of our homes out of steel. It was in January when we started. They did not want to spend the money on hiring an outside contractor to do it. They gave me one of our real good guys and two helpers. It took us 6 weeks just to get it to the the start of the roof. I told my boss ,Iam NOT going to attempt to do the steel roof in the weather conditions at that time and told him I am going to double plate the walls and get our wood trusses in to finish. He agreed. when I asked why he wanted to do this in this kind of weather, he said he needed to know if it could be done year round. It was a very cold winter that year, with lots of ice and snow. I still have nightmares about it (LOL).

Having my own metal shop I've done a lot of projects around our home that otherwise would have been done with wood.

Wife wanted an island in a certain place in the kitchen problem was there was a load bearing post there. I thought a laminated wood beam would be too tall and would divide the room too much visually. So I built this truss beam to span the 20' and support the load on the foundation walls.

Built it with 12ga square tube doubled up horizontally, with about a 1/8" crown. Put the load on it and it still has the 1/8" crown, you could probably park a car upstairs. Weighs about 275 lbs, so probably about the same as the required laminated wood beam.

The bits of color are little painted metal animals the wife stuck on it with magnets :)

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...5&d=1618589831

That is awesome! Nice work.

Cool.

George

I do Heating and Air conditioning, its not just lumber. PVC piping has gone up 10%, sheet metal for duct is going up 15%, copper is always on a roller coaster, Carrier equipment went up 6% Feb 4th, water heaters...forget it 10% in January and going up another 10% by memorial day.

You rock, dude! ****LIKE****

Exactly, and has anyone bought gas lately?

Just bought 7/16 osb at OC Cluss 35.95 a sht. He said lowes is getting more about 40 a sht.

Don’t even go there! Does your lumber have gas? :p

Masking tape. It seems like it went up 50%. Crazy. I consider myself lucky that we always have left over stuff when we demobilize a job, and the company says to ditch it. I can't remember the last time I've had to buy a nice paint brush.

Sounds like a "TREX" deck...a composite material.

Yes I think that’s what it’s called. It has some kind of textured paint on it, it’s a little rough on the bare feet but not painful rough.

I had to replace a rusted-out 36" steel culvert under our driveway a couple weeks ago. I thought I'd be smart and told the excavator to use HDPE. It ended up at almost $70/foot and he said he got the last length from the 1 of 3 suppliers that had any. He said the last time he needed it, the price was <$50 per foot. Maybe the storm that hit Texas disrupted the world of plastics? Guess I'm lucky it wasn't a wooden pipe!

Trex is a wood/plastic composite with the color in it. It's not a paint applied and none should be needed. Yeah it's rough but then again you won't slip on it like you will with painted wood.

I have to replace my storage shed and was going to build one. Not now after seeing the prices on wood and siding. The Home Depot near me has larger premade sheds that so far are reasonably priced. I'm looking at a 12x16 2 story with storage above on each end and a barn type roof for a bit over 4700 that sits on a metal frame work. It's delivered in sections and built on site.

Another place that sells Amish built sheds had one that was about the same but has a few extras and it sells for over 19,000. It's only 10x16 with the second story for storage with stairs. No way I'll spend that kind of money.... unless I have to live in it.

Just got an estimate for 1800 sq ft, 30 X 60 X 12 pole building, $76,000...........:eek:

Includes concrete and wiring, man that seems too high, 42.25 a square foot. That's roughly what I paid to have a home built per square foot in 1992.

We are building a new detached garage next to my house. It's 30' x28' with a second floor apartment for my stepson. The best price I could get on lumber is 24k. Others were 26k and 27k. That's framing lumber only.

1992 was a long time ago. Careful - you may start sounding like my old man, quoting prices from the '40s.

I went with a 1200 sq. ft. insulated metal building on a 5"-6" reinforced concrete slab with 17' center height. Built a mezzanine for additional storage. Fully wired. Have about 30k in it complete (but I've done some of the work).