Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Chatting => Frugal Living => Topic started by: Zak the Rabbit on January 22, 2007, 21:24

Title: Support your local woodyard
Post by: Zak the Rabbit on January 22, 2007, 21:24
ok, so probably not strictly frugal, but today i decided to buy the wood to make the chicken run. Having decided to make is using 2x2 for sturdiness, and to make it in panel sections so it can be dismantled, i was about to commit the sin of going to a big diy shop (will remain nameless but its a two letter name)

Instead i remembered the little woodyard in Selby tucked away on an industrial estate.

Their 2x2 came in 16ft lengths - i had expected it to be 8ft, so had no tools with me, the chap lent me a saw, tape and pencil, so i cut it all down myself (this was before i paid for it). Gawd what a good saw! it went through like it was butter! 8)

I bought 10 16ft lengths. These were £3.20 each, he said "lets call it 3", i also needed a bag of nails, these were £2.50 for a kg, but a couple had poked through and rusted (like one or two out of hundreds) so he said half price, then he knocked off the pennies and made it £31 the lot.

Point being - the big DIY shop the nails are around £2.50 for a half kg, and the wood is about £3 for a 8ft length, and i bet if i had gone to the big shop and used one of their saws and tapes in the middle of the shop they would have gone mental!

so i saved £3.50 on the little woodyards prices, but probably got it all for less than half what the big guns want.


just quite chuffed by it, really,
Title: Support your local woodyard
Post by: denbo73 on January 22, 2007, 21:33
We got two good wood yards nere us and i would not go any were els,one is a reclame yard and you can get all sortes of stuff, and got plenty of wood , the other just deals in wood still cheap as chips though. :lol:
Title: Support your local woodyard
Post by: muntjac on January 22, 2007, 22:27
but did ya ask for free wood chips for ya coops or sheds? :roll:
Title: Support your local woodyard
Post by: Gurder on January 23, 2007, 22:19
I can remember when my dad and I made an aviary for cockatiels & budgies when I was younger and we priced up the wood at several big name DIY shops n then the two local sawmills and we couldn't believe the difference in price! The sawmill we chose was only a few miles away couple closer than the other and got the rough-cut timber from there and to make things better they forgot to charge VAT! and we got 2 bags of sawdust chucked in for free which was used in the garage part that they roosted in!
So I'm with you Zak on supporting local sawmills/timber yards
Title: Support your local woodyard
Post by: Zak the Rabbit on January 24, 2007, 07:54
In my home village we had a timber yard in the old maltings building by the railway, as a kid i would go on me bike and wheel it home with all the timber balanced on it. Hardley ever charged me the vat (cash payment!) and they had a big 'scraps' box, i got most of my stuff out that, i was probably the only person in the world still building radio antenna masts and towers from wood

sadly it was gutted in a fire, i managed to get real close cos a mates mam lived in the workers cottages at the side, it was so intense it melted the cottages gutters and wiped out a caravan at the end house. I could see the fire all the way home from work (i worked other side of the town but came home via the back roads), so much so i thought the glassworks was burning down