5 advantages to buying urban lumber over traditional lumber

November 02, 2020

Traditional lumber is predictable, it comes in specific sizes, colors and shapes. When people want cherry, ash or maple, they picture rectangular pieces with specific colors and grains. These pieces of lumber can only come from a very specific portion of a tree…so what about the rest?  

Urban lumber still allows the user to get quality wood but in ways that traditional lumber cannot compete. Urban lumber allows us at Maine Urban Timber Company to produce a product with five distinct advantages over “normal” lumber.

Provenance: When you pick up some lumber from Lowes, do you know where it comes from? Of course not. At Maine Urban Timber company, we track where our lumber comes from all the way to the point of sale. When you pick up your live edge slab lumber, you will know where in Maine it comes from, down to the street. You cannot do that with regular lumber.  

History: Some trees are more than just a tree from a city or a front yard. Certain trees have historical significance. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a live edge slab from a tree at a local university planted by the class 1915? How about lumber to make a table that was planted by a historical city figure. It would make that table an even more impressive piece once completed.

Figure, color and dimension: You can still get the wood that you can buy commercially with urban lumber but with much more character. Urban live edge slab lumber gives you wood with figure and colors that are normally removed from commercial products. The figure that comes around crotch figure is beautiful and would specifically be cut out of commercial products. If color and figure were not enough, the dimensions of urban slab lumber is significantly larger. At Maine Urban Timber Company, we can cut up a 45” diameter tree which can give us slab lumber over 40” wide. You will not be able to get that at any commercial lumber store and it will be difficult to find it anywhere else in Maine.  

Community meaning: At Maine Urban Timber Company, we track our lumber from the time of cutting it down to the point of sale. This allows us to return trees from specific parts of a town to its residence to be used in furniture pieces or to a local community center to be enjoyed by all. Wouldn’t it be great to have live edge mantel from a tree in your town or a coffee table from a tree in the community park.

Personal meaning: How many people have a tree that a family member planted or has special meaning. If a storm blows it over, keep that special part of the tree alive by making the tree into lumber and building something. Having a beautiful dining room table is one thing, but having the table made from the oak tree that you played in as a child is another.

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