A Guide to Building with Wood

It’s a practice you perhaps see more commonly in North America, particularly in the United States, where people use a lot of wood as the main structural material for their sheds, a guest house shed they may be building, and even their houses.Brick-and-mortar buildings are becoming more of a preference among newer homeowners, otherwise, there are countless instances in which most of the older houses are almost completely built out of wood. Beyond it being a cost-saving practice, sometimes building with wood is more of a conscious choice of style than anything else, especially with regards to structures such s logwood homes and something like a cabin in the woods. In fact, people are also finding that using things like a 3d shed builder help them to plan these builds properly before commencing so that they have a proper idea of how things will pan out.

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A logwood home for instance simply wouldn’t be as beautiful as it is if it wasn’t, well a LOGWOOD home. So it’s increasingly becoming a matter of choice, but that still doesn’t take anything away from the fact that building with wood poses its very own unique set of challenges — challenges which can be overcome all the same. You just have to be prepared for them if you do insist on building with wood.

The type of wood matters

Even if it’s not a DIY project, if you’re adamant you want to build with wood, you’ll have to thoroughly acquaint yourself with the different types of woods because that really matters. A lot of it has to do with exactly what it is you want to build with wood, as building something like a wooden shed would naturally be different to perhaps building an outdoor deck to house your new Conservatory Furniture, or in fact perhaps replacing old doorframes with wooden ones.

It really is a matter of getting to grips with the features and properties of all the wood available to you, but generally your harder woods (which will likely be more expensive too) are good for structural construction, like perhaps building structural beams or the frames of your shed or even your house. The softer woods would then be great for finishing, but then again some of the harder woods look much better than softer woods, so you may well want to use the more expensive harder woods for structures that would otherwise be well built with softer woods. Knowing what you are building this structure for is important, you can then figure out how you want it to look, for example, if you want it as a backyard games room or an office, you may want to look into some he shed ideas to see what is out there. You may come to the conclusion of getting a small structure for this and building onto it as your ideas become a reality. You need to start somewhere.

Engineered plywood is also an option, but again you just have to factor-in considerations such as the cost and weight-to-strength ratio.

Coating and cosmetic fit

Even though harder woods are perhaps a better fit for exterior wooden structures such as decks and even the walls of your shed or house, exposure to the elements requires that these woods are adequately protected with a suitable wood preserver so that they can last longer. Even the outward-facing part the logs used in something like a logwood home need adequate protection against the elements and against other threats like fungi and wood-specific insects like wood-lice, etc.

Finally, since building with wood essentially makes the wood appear to be the dominant cosmetic factor, you’ll have to balance that out with some of the other structural elements and decorations. You can always paint the wood itself with colours that are totally different to what wood is usually coated with as well, of course.