Shoutout to the old lumber yard downtown that still smells like sawdust inside

I stopped by Hoffman Lumber off 7th Street yesterday to grab some cedar planks for a planter box I'm building. Walking in there felt like stepping back to 1995. The floor is still concrete with tire marks from forklifts, and they don't have a website or a computer at the counter. The guy wrote my order on a scrap of cardboard with a stubby pencil. He even asked if I needed him to pick out the straightest boards, which no big box store has done for me in years. Everything cost about 30% less than Home Depot too, but you have to dig through the bins yourself. Anyone else got a spot like this in their town that's somehow still hanging on?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_hill604d ago

You got lucky with that place, not gonna lie. But that cardboard pencil routine ain't charming to me, it's just slow and annoying when I need to get in and out. Last time I tried a yard like that they had three guys standing around smoking while I waited ten minutes just to pay for a bundle of 2x4s. Give me the big box store self checkout any day if it means not wasting my whole lunch break.

sagejackson3d ago

Walked into a place just like this in my town last month for some fence pickets. The owner eyeballed my truck and just asked "cedar or pressure treated?" before I even opened my mouth. Took him maybe four minutes to hand load a perfect stack and I was out the door for twenty bucks less than Lowe's.

hernandez.gavin4d ago

Used to be the same way honestly. I'd get frustrated at the old guy at the hardware store near my parents' house because he'd want to talk about the weather before ringing me up. But after getting 12 foot boards from Home Depot that were twisted like a pretzel I figured I'd give Hoffman a try. The guy there didn't just pick straight boards for me, he showed me how to check for warping by sighting down the edge. That's something you can't get from a self checkout.