Where to find cheap building supplies

[Clay In Iowa]

The wife and I rummaging around to Habitat Restore yesterday. I stumbled in to the back room, now known as the gold mine. I drove off with a good sized load of 2x6s, 2x8s and 2x10 in various lengths from 8 feet to 12 feet, most of them 10 feet +. Most of these boards were priced around $3. New they go for $8-10 each. So for $80.40 I got what would have cost $300+ at Lowes. SCORE!!!!!


I have enough lumber to frame the floor of a coop 16 x 12. Combined with a bunch of free lumber I got last fall from a friend. I can frame the floor cover it with 3/4" OSB and start the walls. And All I have in it is the $80.40. Not too bad.

 

[sugarbush]

Your lucky, our habitat store is severely over priced. We have plenty of rough sawn mills in this area so lumber is cheap through them.

 

[CrunchySarah]

Were you at the one in Iowa City? I was there last week, and didn't see much I could use. Did they have anymore stuff left?

 

[tinners204]

I put heating and cooling in new house and the best time to get free lumber is when the carpenters are done framing. Any board with a nail or saw mark in it can not go back to the lumber yard. Full sheets of OSB board that maybe has small piece of the corner gone can't go back so they all end up in the dumpster. You can even find shingles,
Tyvek, anything and everything. But just make sure you pull it out of the dumpster and not the jog site. That could get you in trouble. I have built many chicken house's this way for free.

 

[Clay In Iowa]

Quote:
I was in the Iowa city one last week also. Not much there.

I found a ton of stuff in Davenport..... not much big lumber left though

 

[patandchickens]

Our local ReStore is gaggingly overpriced for upscale-type items (e.g. marble sinks and kitchen suites and fancy flooring remnants), reasonably priced for older plain-vanilla things (e.g. older unexciting windows), and incredibly cheap for lumber scraps IF you happen to hit them when they actually HAVE any lumber scraps. It's very feast-or-famine. When they have 'em, though, I typically pay something like $0.50 for an 8-10' 2x6.

Pat