A Few days ago I was trying to help a friend get a 4 by 4 board to lift the mattress of her bed up 4 inches to prevent reflux while sleeping. She had tried the triangular pillow made of foam that I sometimes use to lift myself about 6 inches off the bed from shoulders to head. Lately I also notice in Hotels they give you several pillows to achieve the same effect. However, for her somehow she just slids down off of it. It works for me though.
We went to a Lumber yard and I was trying to think of a wood that wouldn't weep so there would be less sap to worry about for something like this. I thought maybe a redwood 4 by 4 would not weep. However, I was wrong because the lumber yard man said this weeps both blue and black stuff which could be a problem. He recommended a 10 foot piece of Douglas fir for around 7 dollars instead of the 4 by 4 piece of 8 foot redwood cut into a 60 inch piece which I had already paid 47 dollars for.
The point I'm trying to make here is that redwood is basically now (not available for decking at almost any price. A friend in Mt. Shasta just built stairs and a rail to his 2nd story performance studio and just the redwood cost him over 40,000 dollars which was probably more than he paid for all the material in the whole building for the performance studio! An average size house by the way often uses $75, 000 to 150,000 dollars worth of materials before you add the cost of any labor unless you assemble and build it yourself.
So, when I went to replace my redwood decking in our back yard attached to our house because at 25 or 30 years old one level of it collapsed from the infrastucture underneath one day this fall, I realized we needed to replace it so I or someone else didn't get hurt. We have 5 sliding French doors made of wood that all open up to this deck which is great. There is also a double door that opens up onto this deck as well.
So, we finally went with Timber Tech with a synthetic wood decking that looks like Redwood. However, I think I like it better than redwood because there are no slivers when I go barefoot on it and whenever there is sun on it I can go barefoot year around. Likely only on the Hottest day of the year would I need to wear sandals to protect my feet from the heat.
For a large deck on the back of our house with 5 levels, a ramp for one of our dogs and a stairway it was around 61,000 dollars installed for labor and materials. If we had tried to go redwood this same multi-level decking likely would have been between 100,000 and 200,000 dollars if it even was available. (And I'm in Northern California where this stuff grows). So, from my point of view any redwoods that don't have to be cut down for my deck means more children now and in the future will actually still live to see alive redwoods 300 feet tall and sometimes 30 to 40 feet through like in Sequoia National Park here in California (even though most redwoods are 200 to 300 feet tall and around 3 to 7 feet through in most places from Big Sur Northwards. However, they vibe like no other tree alive and feel very magical to be around. I love all trees but there is something very very evolved and special about redwoods because they often live thousands of years. So, finding a redwood born before Jesus was born isn't unusual at all in California.
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