Hello everybody, hope you all are doing well despite all of the current chaos in our world.

I have finally retired as an industrial electrician as of January, my body wasn't taking the abuse anymore. I am starting a T-shirt business as a new source of income, I will be producing novelty Tees in electrical, motocross and musical fields as well as just random funny sayings.

I am also leaving lovely Atomic City soon, still staying in Idaho but moving on to a property where I will be building my new house.

The last year was very rough, with loss of two close friends out here, a cancer scare, and the passing of my mother in December. I also was recently in the hospital with heart issues, and will be getting another cardiac workup soon.

Anyways, I have been browsing the forums again here, and look forward to hearing from some of you soon.

Cheers!

Hey...
Welcome back!!!

First, congrats on retiring, and best of luck with the tee business!!

Good Luck with the new house; are the building materials $$$ in Idaho as crazy as they are here ($65 for 4x8 plywood; $8 for a 2x4, etc)??

Yes, the last year has been tough for a lot of us, and condolences on losing your mom.

I will say it's tough getting into our "Golden Years"; I thing the "Gold" part is to the medical profession.

Thanks for the condolences and congrats John.

It has been very difficult, but I am trying to move on in many ways. I have suffered with severe depression for the last 25 years or so so all of that hitting at once almost pushed me over the edge.

Not quite that high on materials out here, I do know 2x4s here are around 6.75-7.00 each right now (was just at the Orange box store yesterday.) I am not looking forward to seeing to cost on my build, especially since outer walls out here are mostly required to be 2x6 framed. (Those were around 12.00 for an 8 foot 2x6). I am looking at around a 2k sq ft house, so I cringe at what lumber will cost. Thankfully labor for a framer isn't too bad out here, yet.

I will end up with a pretty good ROI on my current house, if I can get the kitchen reno done soon so I can list it before end of month. The proceeds from this house should be enough for my well, septic and crawlspace footers walls at least. I do need to buy a cheap RV to live in on my new parcel during construction as well.

My years right now have been more lead than gold for sure, lol.

Is steel frame an option? My wife built about 100 houses with steel framing. That was just interior walls tho but I did see a totally steel framed house here. With the price of lumber I would certainly be looking for an option.
Not much here is stick built tho. The exterior is usually concrete block and stucco or ICF. They don't have to haul that over a mountain tho

MX,
Welcome back, mate,
Great to see you made it back here!
Don't be a stranger.
Cheers,
Mike T.

To be fair Greg, it isn't just the US that's having issues with timber, one of the major timber mills here in NZ said last week that they will no longer be supplying places like Bunnings and Mitre 10 (think Home Depot and Lowes) as there is no value in them doing so.

So effectively, we have a situation where one-man band builders are going to try and stock-pile as much timber as they can to finish the work they have coming up, after that runs out, who knows what is going to happen.
If you're someone like me who does need small bits of wood for my work, I should be fine.

The whole up-shot of this is, the mills can close down, shedding hundreds of workers and they ship the logs to China,
because of the so-called "cost of production" and then they ship it back here again (how on earth is that sustainable or "green") and sell it back to us at a grossly-inflated margin/price, this really makes me angry.

Personally, If I build a house in the near future, it will have a steel structure and that is what a lot of people I know will do as well, timber has priced itself off the market, in a country that has radiata pine trees everywhere, but the "investors" are sitting on them to wait for a better log price.
We are all going to Hell in a hand-basket.

mxslick,

Good to see an old(er) 'face' around here,

Good Luck with your retirement, Don't be a stranger!!