While we complete our plans for the Heald Cottage and the Pierce Homestead to be built on Yankee Way in Brookline, NH, our thoughts turn to wood, - and not because our chicken coop is full of 200 year old beams, either!  As builders, we must make choices about how our houses will be constructed and, in this day of engineered wood, the choices are many.

Plywood came into use in the early 1900’s.  It’s made from thin sheets of wood veneer stacked together alternating the grain of each sheet and glued under heat and pressure to create strength.  Creating plywood requires using large, older growth trees big enough to be placed on a lathe and peeled into veneer sheets. But building demand here and abroad has encouraged manufacturers to search for cost-effective ways to use more variety of trees – and younger ones. (visit http://www.apawood.org for an industry manufacturer’s perspective).

Enter engineered wood products that are made by grinding up wood and gluing wood strands, particles, and fibers into usable building materials.  Different glues have been developed for different product applications but the most used are urea-formaldehyde resins (inexpensive but not waterproof) and phenol and melamine-formaldehyde resins (water resistant).

Oriented Strand Board, OSB, is the most common alternative to plywood.  In many parts of the country it is fast replacing plywood as builders product of choice as it is less expensive.  But OSB has its detractors.  While many engineering studies refute contentions that OSB is more prone to nail-pops, few argue that OSB’s most serious drawback is its tendency to swell in high humidity or when it gets wet.  So manufacturers of roofing and flooring materials (such as tile) are more cautious in their recommendations for using OSB as a substitute for plywood.  Here’s a good link for you to read the pros and cons of plywood vs. oriented strand board:

http://www.umass.edu/bmatwt/publications/articles/osb_vs_plywood.html.

Plywood:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/plywood

Laminated Veneer Lumber:  LVL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/laminated_veneer_lumber

Trompe L'oeil Art

How did folks plan their retirement in colonial days? When Maxcy Fisher’s parents decided to sell him the family homestead, they worked out a deal that would assure them a place to live.  Maxcy was not yet married, - but clearly planning that happy event – and so he and his parents agreed they would continue to own a third of the home, its outbuildings, livestock, gardens and, yes, manure pile.  This was a common arrangement for the times; we’ve encountered similar divvying up of property among children and parents in prior deeds.  Given that the extended family was an important part of family life in the 18th century, we created a trompe l’oiel painting of the deed between Maxcy and his parents as a reminder of the close family arrangements of earlier days.