The Home Depot near me stopped doing cull lumber. I don’t know if that’s just a local thing or if the whole chain stopped doing it. That sent me looking for alternatives, and I found one at Menards. Menards does cull lumber a bit differently, but there are a couple of ways to get cheap lumber at discounted prices at Menards. Menards doesn’t call it cull lumber, they call it value lumber. And they also sell an economy grade of lumber.
Value wood at Menards
The closest equivalent to Home Depot cull lumber you will find at Menards is called value wood. Go to the indoor lumber section of the store, and look along the bottom rows. Somewhere inconspicuous, you will find a row of value lumber. These are random odd lengths of lumber, sorted and priced by width. The exact length will vary, but if you can work with random lengths of 2×4 and other common widths, you can get lumber at a pretty significant discount.
These are typically boards that were too damaged to sell as-is, so they cut off the damaged section and sell the rest.
It’s not as haphazard as Home Depot, where they would just take whatever lumber nobody wanted and dump it on a cart. Boards are sorted and priced so the cashiers won’t hassle you. At my local Home Depot, there was a guy named Calvin who was notorious for hassling you about cull lumber. I had to learn to avoid him.
The stuff does sell fast, so if you want to score some value lumber, I would recommend finding out where it is at your nearest location, then go there first, then when you got everything else you need, go back again before you leave in the off chance that anything else showed up.
Economy lumber at Menards
The other thing Menards does is sell different grades of lumber, the way I remember local home improvement chains selling lumber when I was a kid. There was the standard grade of lumber, and then they sold something called seconds and possibly even thirds.
Seconds and thirds were boards that were crooked, cracked, had unattractive grain patterns, or just otherwise didn’t look right, but were generally structurally sound.
Menards economy lumber is the modern equivalent of those lesser grades of lumber. They still sell a grade that is comparable to what you would find at Lowe’s or Home Depot and the price is typically comparable. But they also sell an economy grade of the most common sizes like 2X4s.
The economy boards don’t sell at the same kind of discount that cull lumber does, but the supply is much more predictable. You can look on the website and see if they have stock. And they typically have about as much of it as they have the standard grade.
The economy lumber has been in a different place in every store I have visited. I recommend you ask in the store. The website hasn’t been much help finding it any of the stores I have visited.
Fun with cheap projects from junk lumber
I found it fun to make projects out of lumber that I found in Home Depot’s cull lumber. So I am glad to be able to do something similar with value lumber and economy grade lumber from Menards. I built a couple of computer desks out of junk lumber. I also built picture ledges I use to hang vintage computers on my wall from junk lumber. Earlier this year when I needed to make another one, I used junk lumber I picked up at Menards. After I painted it, you can’t even tell that it’s a dollar worth of lumber as opposed to $5 worth. I spent almost as much on screws and glue as I did on the lumber.
Maybe I’m weird, but seeing how cheaply I can build something truly useful is something I find fun.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
Oh great, even more competition… 🙂 I’ve found a lot of unusual pieces of wood there that have become useful shop or other projects. There are usually a few other places to check. I’ll look at an end cap near the electrical department because not only do they have extension cords and light bulbs, I’ve found small 10/100 network switches that I’m still using.