How to chose Lumber at the store

This will be a article about how to select wood for your projects. For most of my wood purchase I go to my local home depot, but note not all boards are the same so you are going to have to put some time in to select good boards. First I would start by

getting a cart, I would stay away from the typical grocery store cart and go more a flat or racked cart because you can fit a lot more wood on them and you can control them much easier, you can see it to the left.  Next I would walk over to the wood you plan on buying, note if you plan on buying S4S lumber witch stands for surfaced on all four sides, all of what I am about to say will not apply for choosing the lumber.  S4S can be more pricey and some time come in only come in certain withes and lengths, so you might be forced to mill it yourself. Now back to selecting your wood, You are going to want to move the cart parallel to the pile of wood so then it will be easier to move the wood from the pile to the cart.  Now it comes down to selecting the boards, you are going to pay the same price for a nice piece of redwood or a piece of white growth board, an example of a growth board is the top white board in the pile.

As you can see from looking at the side of the pile of lumber there are pieces of redwood that are red in color and pieces that are white but you are going to pay the same price for the boards, so it is important to buy the red color boards because they have all of the nice quality for outdoor boards. They try to sell the white growth boards but they are just the outer layer of the tree and it does not whether as well as the natural redwood.

Next is price, there are many different types of wood based on the different quality of board. There are rough sawn boards that are direct from the saw mill and are usually wet, witch means it was recently milled up. They will also sell surfaced wood that has either been sanded or planed to have at least one finished side. The most expensive of them all is S4S lumbers because the finish all of the sides of the lumber it is usually used in fine woodworking and that is about.

Loading to your car, make sure before you buy any lumber that your car can handle the amount of wood you plan on buying.  For example I know that my SUV fits 8 foot long boards, so I know not buy any thing longer than 8 feet because it is a hassle to go back and return wood that you cant fit in your car. If you drive a small car and you are going to buy a lot of wood you can rent the home depot truck to move a lot of material, It is also really handy if you have to buy plywood or OSB because it can fit a who sheet in the bed of the truck.

If you are not going to uses the wood in the days after you purchase it then you should put the wood on a flat surface to dry. The wood is still wet and as the water evaporates the board will form to what ever it is left to, this is why it is important that you leave it on a flat supported surface.

Sources for Blog

For this blog I will be sourcing my knowledge from the website "This Old House" and my myself. TOH is a very reliable source and that they have story's on everything under the sun. Besides have a great website, the quickest way for me to understand how to learn something is threw video or demonstration and TOH has a wonderful YouTube channel that parallels the website in there story. In the videos the people in the photo below are the hosts and they all have different trades. From the left is the landscaper, then one over is the master plumber, one over is the general contractor, next over is the host of the show and always to the right is the master carpenter.  They all do different segments on the show and they are all very respectable in there trades.

                        I also use the you the house improvements YouTube channel to learn more basic general construction.  The host is a general contractor in Canada and he is knowledgeable for many constructions topics like rough carpentry, drywall, electrical, building and many other topic. I used his video series to build a 8" by 12" shed on my property. If you have any simple and general DIY projects he probably has a video on the topic. He makes it very capable to learn from his videos and I highly recommend him.

My plan is to have a collection of story's and videos that teach a wide range of skills on lots of different topics of construction. There are a few projects that I have in mind but I will also be playing it by year because the is always things being broke in my house and I am the fix it man. So I will be taking you on the adventure and hopefully it will be interesting. Like I said be for I learn from seeing/ watching, so most of the post will have accompanying vlogs to make the story more in depth.

*Please attempt any DIY project with your own discretion