Just hit 1000 board feet of reclaimed lumber I've pulled and processed myself

I started keeping a log when I got my first house in 2018, mostly just to see if the work was worth the effort. That number hit me when I was stacking some old barn wood from a tear-down near Toledo. It's not just about the wood, it's about the shift from buying everything new at the big box store to seeing the potential in what's already there. Anyone else track their material use like that, or am I just weird?

3 comments

3 Comments

blakeharris2mo ago

Used to think that was just junk until I started seeing the stories in the grain.

william_taylor25d ago

Man I had a similar thing happen with an old tool shed I tore down behind my house, every single board had these weird burn marks from an old lantern that must have fallen off the shelf. After a few hours of scraping off the dirt you could see the little char patterns where someone would have grabbed it to light the place at dawn. It really changes how you look at the whole process when you start noticing those little stories like what blakeharris is talking about.

sarah1982mo ago

I read an article about a guy in Maine who tracked every single nail and board from an 1830s barn he took down. He said the real cost wasn't in the wood, but in the TIME spent learning to see the value in old things. Your 1000 board feet number is a huge deal, it's a real measure of that shift you're talking about. It's not weird at all, it's proof you're building something with a real story. That Toledo barn wood is going to look amazing knowing you saved it yourself.