Oregon Joins LA in Recycling Fire-damaged Trees

Over 1.57 million board feet of lumber is being put up for sale by the state’s Bureau of Land Management. Following similar actions from the city of Los Angeles after its devastating wildfires earlier this year, fire-stricken lumber from across 250 public areas in Baker County, southwest of Durkee, is being offered for sale. The […]

These Are the 11 Biggest Houses in the World According to Architectural Digest

They come from all over the world and if you’re thinking the White House or Hearst Castle, you’re thinking small. We’re not quite sure how they figured it out, but famed design magazine Architectural Digest recently came up with its list of the largest homes in the world and while America has always been considered […]

Harvard Confirms Remodeling Forecasts

Continuing what we’ve seen from other studies, this is the latest outlook from Harvard’s prestigious housing studies program. Oftentimes, research studies present contradictory findings on any given subject. Currently, that’s not the case with the latest forecasts on the remodeling sector. The new Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) from Harvard’s Remodeling Futures Program at […]

Furniture Retailers Showing Surprising Strength

It may just be consumers pushing up purchases in advance of tariff-related price hikes but many of the big chains showed better numbers for their most recent quarters. The furniture business has been in a post-pandemic hangover going on three years, its sales impacted not just by consumers turning their attention more to out-of-home spending […]

Tariffs Finally Hit Canadian Wood Shipments to the U.S.

Everyone’s been waiting to see when the bill would come due for the Trump duties on Canadian Lumber. July was the month. Prices of Canadian lumber coming into the U.S. are as much as 60 percent higher than they were just a year ago as tariffs instituted by the Trump administration are fully taking hold […]

USDA Upping Its Mass Timber Investments

As the soft housing market in the U.S. is impacting the mass timber movement, the Forest Service is stepping in to help. “Mass timber and CLT have been priorities for creating new markets for wood products,” said Brian Brashaw, assistant director of the Wood Innovations Program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. “Since […]

The Tale of the $1.4 Million Trees

When is a group of trees worth more than a million dollars? When they’re on Nantucket and they’ve been cut down – maybe illegally. Neighbors feuding – and even eventually suing each other – over trees that may have been cut down without permission is nothing new. It’s been going on since people began living near […]

These Two Giants Control Nearly Half of Home Improvement Market

It’s no surprise that Home Depot and Lowe’s are the largest retailers in the business, but together, their market share is astounding. The retail world for home improvement and building products continues to be dominated by two big national chains. It’s the level of that dominance that a new study confirms that shows exactly how […]

New Legislation Introduced to Support Modernizing Sawmills

Even as the U.S. Congress remains deeply divided, a new bipartisan bill has been introduced into the Senate. The proposed legislation comes from Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Montana Senator Tim Sheehy and is called the “Supporting American Wood and Mill Infrastructure with Loans for Longevity (SAWMILL) Act.” It would support mills around the nation by […]

The West Is the Best for Micro-Housing

The tiny house movement is nationwide but four cities lead the country in their development. Micro-housing is now a staple of new home construction, presenting new challenges for builders used to working on a larger scale. And even if the western part of the country is still the prime area for such undersized homes and […]