4 ms·

> ugly gaps, quick to stain stuccos and metals, slapdash construction and very little craftsmanship. I lived for a couple years in a slowly-deteriorating house

by ashark 10y ago

> ugly gaps, quick to stain stuccos and metals, slapdash construction and very little craftsmanship. I lived for a couple years in a slowly-deteriorating house on the national historic registry. Upper middle class when it was built in 1907. Big by the standards of the time, but not huge. You'd have to be very wealthy to afford the lumber quality (even the lumber under the floors and inside walls was excellent by modern standards) and the woodwork in that house these days, assuming you could even find such without simply ripping it out of an older house. And despite never having had air conditioning and having very bad heating, every joint in that house was so tight you couldn't fit paper between the boards. Beautiful solid wood doors throughout, which would cost a fortune to put in a new house.

rsync 10y ago
"You'd have to be very wealthy to afford the lumber quality (even the lumber under the floors and inside walls was excellent by modern standards) and the woodwork in that house these days, assuming you could even find such without simply ripping it out of an older house." This meme about old wood and big wood and scarcity, etc., is oft-repeated, but I find it's not true. Granted, there are some very specific woods that you can't buy new (old growth redwood, etc.) but you will have no problem at all picking up the phone and buying kiln-dried 12x12 beams, 24 feet long, etc., etc. ... no problem at all. And they're not really that expensive, either. We had to buy a lot of 8x12 KD doug fir beams and 8x12 KD cedar beams for a barn renovation this past year and it wasn't budget-busting.
- Retric 10y ago
  Faster growing trees make worse wood. Tree farms flood the market with cheap wood that's vastly worse from a materials perspective than old growth. A 24 foot long beam of high quality wood takes ~300 years to grow, 'nobody has time for that'. At the high end ebony costs ~150x the cost of pine, though there are cheaper related species. It's also dense enough to sink in water. Mostly you find Gaboon ebony which while pricey is mostly comparable. http://www.woodworkerssource.com/shop/category/ebony_gaboon.html http://www.woodworkerssource.com/shop/category/ebony_gaboon....
  - b_emery 10y ago
    Case in point: the floors of my 95 yr old house are douglas fir. The grain spacing is about 2 mm. Try finding douglas fir like that at home depot.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  The finishing millwork stuff is crazy. We had an insect infestation on our front porch behind the beadboard. I pulled it out to get rid of the ants, and some jerk stole it from my driveway. Replacing those boards would cost something like $5,000 today.
hx87 10y ago
> You'd have to be very wealthy to afford the lumber quality For engineering purposes, you don't, since plywood and OSB are far more dimensionally consistent than the best of old growth lumber. Aesthetically, old growth wood is superior, but in most cases wood is covered in drywall & plaster anyway.
- riskable 10y ago
  Old growth wood is just plain stronger than the type of wood you'd find in modern buildings. How much stronger? About 2-3x depending on the wood. Also, heartwood (from the center of the tree) is stronger than wood from the outer portions. You cannot find (significant) lumber from 300+ year old trees anymore. That's what the original poster was referring to. I don't think aesthetics has anything to do with it.
  - hx87 10y ago
    > Old growth wood is just plain stronger than the type of wood you'd find in modern buildings. That's true only if you discount engineered wood products, which are superior in strength to even the best of old growth lumber. For resistance to shear stress, nothing beats plywood or OSB; for bending stress, LVL; for tensile stress, LSL; for compressive stress, finger joined lumber.

by ashark 10y ago

rsync 10y ago

"You'd have to be very wealthy to afford the lumber quality (even the lumber under the floors and inside walls was excellent by modern standards) and the woodwork in that house these days, assuming you could even find such without simply ripping it out of an older house." This meme about old wood and big wood and scarcity, etc., is oft-repeated, but I find it's not true. Granted, there are some very specific woods that you can't buy new (old growth redwood, etc.) but you will have no problem at all picking up the phone and buying kiln-dried 12x12 beams, 24 feet long, etc., etc. ... no problem at all. And they're not really that expensive, either. We had to buy a lot of 8x12 KD doug fir beams and 8x12 KD cedar beams for a barn renovation this past year and it wasn't budget-busting.

Retric 10y ago
Faster growing trees make worse wood. Tree farms flood the market with cheap wood that's vastly worse from a materials perspective than old growth. A 24 foot long beam of high quality wood takes ~300 years to grow, 'nobody has time for that'. At the high end ebony costs ~150x the cost of pine, though there are cheaper related species. It's also dense enough to sink in water. Mostly you find Gaboon ebony which while pricey is mostly comparable. http://www.woodworkerssource.com/shop/category/ebony_gaboon.html http://www.woodworkerssource.com/shop/category/ebony_gaboon....
- b_emery 10y ago
  Case in point: the floors of my 95 yr old house are douglas fir. The grain spacing is about 2 mm. Try finding douglas fir like that at home depot.
Spooky23 10y ago
The finishing millwork stuff is crazy. We had an insect infestation on our front porch behind the beadboard. I pulled it out to get rid of the ants, and some jerk stole it from my driveway. Replacing those boards would cost something like $5,000 today.

hx87 10y ago

> You'd have to be very wealthy to afford the lumber quality For engineering purposes, you don't, since plywood and OSB are far more dimensionally consistent than the best of old growth lumber. Aesthetically, old growth wood is superior, but in most cases wood is covered in drywall & plaster anyway.

riskable 10y ago
Old growth wood is just plain stronger than the type of wood you'd find in modern buildings. How much stronger? About 2-3x depending on the wood. Also, heartwood (from the center of the tree) is stronger than wood from the outer portions. You cannot find (significant) lumber from 300+ year old trees anymore. That's what the original poster was referring to. I don't think aesthetics has anything to do with it.
- hx87 10y ago
  > Old growth wood is just plain stronger than the type of wood you'd find in modern buildings. That's true only if you discount engineered wood products, which are superior in strength to even the best of old growth lumber. For resistance to shear stress, nothing beats plywood or OSB; for bending stress, LVL; for tensile stress, LSL; for compressive stress, finger joined lumber.