Comment by bamfly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bamfly | Hacker News Reader

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I owned a house built around that time, for a while, but not a kit house.

The lumber they used for structural members (huge, 8x10ish boards, very long, all around where the foundation met the house; joists; et c) or for other parts that were never meant to be seen, like floor underlayment (which was a bunch of ordinary boards laid diagonally, so they wouldn't match up with wood floor boards laid atop it—not plywood) would probably have gone to veneer these days. Knot-free, perfect stuff. Much of it's likely nearly impossible to get these days at any price, in the same size and quality, short of salvage from houses like that. I never got much of a look in the walls, but it was 2 stories plus a full-height floor for the attic (need that for temp control, in the days before air conditioning) and was "balloon" construction, which means they used a whole bunch of boards 2-3 stories high to frame the exterior walls, which, again, probably nearly impossible to find these days, straight and strong enough to do such a thing.

I follow some wooden window restoration businesses on YouTube and usually that is the first thing they say. Save your windows, because you can't buy wood of this quality anymore no matter what you spend.

It’s certainly possible to get such wood, but rare. Harvesting 1% of a timber parcel per year is devilishly hard. Those that do it have all the customers they need and don’t really want to talk with anyone else - it’s more a factor of how the wood is going to be used than the price.

Do you have any idea of suppliers or where to find such suppliers? Like I said, I'd like to find some of the tight grain Douglas Fir for my floor, and I also make furniture and pour hours and hours of my time into it, the wood is cheap in comparison.

Is this because the wood back then was old, naturally grown wood which is now depleted?

That's my understanding, yes. There was so much old-growth wood (in North America, anyway) that practically all lumber produced was excellent by modern standards. No reason to bother with young or otherwise low-quality trees.

I notice that working-class houses of the 60s-80s (and a bit into the 90s) usually had solid wood trim and doors, too, typically throughout. Those are now luxury-tier, and even rather expensive houses will use particle board (basically cardboard—sawdust and glue) or pieced-together pine that must be finished with paint, and hollow doors, often without even finish-grade veneer (so they have to be painted, can't stain and varnish them). Expensive houses where the person building it cared a little more (or the buyer had input) may put solid wood in certain public areas, but e.g. bedrooms? Hardly ever, now, at least in houses built for/by people who work for a living. So the process of lumber-worsening may be ongoing.

The tight grain pattern that comes from slow growth in an old growth forest is something impossible to replicate in a post clear cut environment.

I am not positive, but increasing temps and lighter winters, more CO2 in the atmosphere, probably also increase the growth per season even in a forest that hasn’t been logged, if there are any.

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