I stumbled into a lumberyard the other day and noticed a sign by the 2×4\u2019s that read $7. Last time I looked a 2×4 cost 2 bucks and some change. The sticker shock made me check the price of plywood just to see if maybe some new employee with glasses fogged by his Covid mask hadn\u2019t screwed up the price inadvertently, but nope, the \u00bd inch plywood was 3 and a half times what it was last sheet I bought not too long back.<\/p>\n
Ditto the 2×6\u2019s and the treated lumber and the cedar decking. All I can figure is either Covid killed a helluva lot of trees, driving the prices sky high or it killed the loggers who refused to wear masks. Whatever, this is another dark side of the pandemic, no doubt another conspiracy by the damn Democrats to raise the cost of a home and ruin the American Dream for the average citizen.<\/p>\n
My old roommate from our Slacker Years when we were content with poverty, living the Dream down at the South End, came up recently for a visit. I had the shack then and a mortgage of $24,000 with a monthly payment of $180. Easy living! If you didn\u2019t mind shack life. And we certainly didn\u2019t. Known to the local lumberyard as the Piranha Brothers, we built two additions to that shack, one a backroom I used as a stained glass shop and the other, a kitchen addition, room for a sink and cabinets plus a 1920\u2019s electric stove and a 6 foot by 3 foot clear cedar slab for a table, probably worth a bitcoin or three in today\u2019s speculative lumber market. <\/p>\n
We built with 2×4\u2019s and 2×6\u2019s, probably spent a couple hundred bucks to frame both, same with the plywood siding, go Martha Stewart with tarpaper then nail on the cedar shakes scrounged from various sources and voila, you got yourself some elbow room, mister, maybe not Architectural Digest, but nice for the price.<\/p>\n
Now, of course, I\u2019m considering taking them apart. Gotta be worth more as vintage 2×4\u2019s than a tax appraiser\u2019s assessment of a deteriorating hundred year old hovel. I\u2019ll even pull the rusty nails, only cost slightly more than what the lumberyard wants for inferior wood. And \u2026 environmentally correct to recycle. Yep, sounds like a win win to this old Piranha Brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I stumbled into a lumberyard the other day and noticed a sign by the 2×4\u2019s that read $7. Last time I looked a 2×4 cost 2 bucks and some change. The sticker shock made me check the price of plywood just to see if maybe some new employee with glasses fogged by his Covid mask […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3647,3648,3646,3649],"class_list":["post-14167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-2x4-bubble","tag-housing-costs","tag-lumber-costs","tag-lumberyard-sticker-shock"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14168,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14167\/revisions\/14168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}