Buying lumber is an awful lot of fun. Forget all the stuff you’ve heard about just going to Home Depot, Menards or Lowes (or other mega-chains) because “it’s convenient.”  If you want high quality, you gotta go to a lumber yard.  You’re not only supporting a small business in your area, but you’re also establishing a relationship with a local merchant.  And in the current state of the economy, both are very important.

You can find the lumber yard near you by doing a quick Google search.  As you can see, using St. Louis, MO as an example, there are a TON of places to buy in the metro area.  I’m using one close to the job site for easy transport, and, if I like the yard and the quality of the lumber, I’ll go back for framing materials for a basement project I’m undertaking later this spring (keep checking Fix It Up for that series of posts).

The other advantage of buying locally is often times, you’ll get free pieces of scrap lumber.  When we picked up our boards, we were given about 80 ft. of scrap 2×4s that were still quite usable — try getting that at a mega-mart home improvement warehouse!

With lumber in tow, we went to the job site and set-up our tools.  The first order of business was cutting lumber to spec with my Craftsman Compound Miter Saw (see video).

Pictures of the float (in progress) to appear in our next post.