Lumbery curates wood from Maine's niche sawmills

Lumbery co-owners Ryan Holland and Mike Friedland

Lumbery sells Maine wood with a story. Those silky smooth pine boards come from a family-owned sawmill in New Gloucester. The beefy lattice panels exuding the scent of cedar come from an Amish-owned sawmill in Corinna. The heavy hemlock framing lumber comes from another family-owned mill in Bradford.

The Lumbery, which opened in Cape Elizabeth last month, is the first retail lumber yard to promote Maine-grown wood curated from family-owned niche sawmills. Co-owner Mike Friedland considers it his mission to reconnect consumers with the variety of Maine wood products that is hard to find in today’s big-box stores.

“We’re part of the buy-local movement,” said Friedland, a home remodeler. “Why help a town down south when we can help the Town of Bradford?”

Downtown Cape Elizabeth might seem at first to be an unlikely place for this venture. Traffic counts are too low, real estate prices too high and surrounding land uses too incompatible for a big-footprint lumber yard. But Cape is also home to sophisticated consumers with high-end tastes. Catering to this sensibility, Friedland and his partners have made the experience of buying lumber a little less like hiking through a warehouse and a little more like ambling through a hipster country store.

The Lumbery’s clapboard-sided exterior and wooden hanging sign nicely disguise the building’s earlier incarnation as a Cumberland Farms convenience. Inside, quirky touches abound. Labels are hand-drawn in multi-colored liquid chalk. Stair railings and shelving brackets are fashioned from stout tree branches. In the middle of the store stands a floor-to-ceiling sculpture – a column of twisted rebar and wire made to look like a tree. On the floor squats a burlap coffee bag of kindling, containing the cut-off scraps from the remodeling job that produced the Lumbery. Displays of Lumbery-branded gift items nest amid the assorted hand tools, fasteners and lumber racks

“We’re sort of hardware store meets lumberyard with a social and environmental conscience,” said Friedland. It’s a business concept that Friedland thinks he invented. “I don’t think I’ve seen it anyplace else.”

The concept is grounded in Friedland’s experience as a carpenter for 25 years. He’s geared his inventory to remodelers and handy homeowners, a market he knows well from having run a home remodeling business in the Portland suburbs for two decades. He stocks some items that are unavailable at area big-box stores, such as cedar pattern siding. His selection is limited in other items. His framing lumber tops out at eight feet and primed trim is unavailable. However, Friedland maintains that he stocks “ninety five percent” of what a homeowner needs “to repair, maintain and upgrade their home.” Pricing is comparable to area lumber yards. Although job-site delivery is not a standard service, he thinks convenience will be a large factor because his nearest competitors are big box retailers at the Maine Mall, which can be an hour round trip when traffic is bad.

Friedland calls out the sources of lumber in a wall map with multi-colored arrows and labels: Maschino & Sons Lumber Co in New Gloucester, Maine Cedar Store in Portage, Yoder’s Custom Sawing in Corinna, Parker Lumber Co in Bradford, Butler’s Cedar Products. These are family-owned businesses that he’s grown to know. “Every mill we deal with is very prideful. They really believe they have the best,” he said.

In the lumber world, source labeling like this stands out, although it is common in food business, particularly with the growing appeal of locally-grown.

To be sure, retail lumber yards in Maine are well stocked with Maine pine and spruce, but you will be hard pressed to find it labeled as such, unless you know how to read lumber stamps. And if you investigate, you will discover substitutes from afar are often easier to find than local products. Deck framing and landscape timbers come mostly from the southeastern US, even though pressure-treated hemlock from Maine is available to those who hunt; Likewise, western red cedar from the Pacific northwest is easier to find than Maine northern white cedar. “I don’t know why we get red cedar from the northwest when we have white cedar here,” said Friedland.

The short explanation for the current state of affairs is that wood is a world-wide commodity. Wood goes wherever pricing is competitive. Quality and performance are certainly factors, but a grade-stamped two by four performs about the same regardless of its origin. Maine both imports and exports wood. Even The Lumbery can’t avoid stocking some un-local wood. His plywood comes from the Pacific northwest. The pressure-treated lumber comes from the south, though he plans to switch to Maine hemlock soon. “Except for plywood and PT, everything else is from Maine,” he said.

A segment of the build-design community is gravitating to local-sourcing. It’s driven partly by building-sustainability rating systems. It’s also driven by growing awareness of rain forest destruction, suspect logging practices and the high carbon footprint of shipping wood long distances.

“Choices have impacts. You think buying a two by four from Home Depot is a passive purchase, but it has an impact. Why would you not want to buy wood from Maine when you have the option?” says Friedland.

Changing habits takes more than messaging. Friedland is doing it by building community. He’s already started a tool lending library. “For $300 a year, a member can borrow any tool we have.” He estimates he’s amassed $40,000 worth of toold over the years. “We have staging, power washer, ladders, compressors, router, jigsaw. Belt sanders. Most are in excellent condition.” Also plans to hold classes, when he gets the okay for the town.

As if on cue from local-sourcing central casting, a former neighbor and client walks into the store. Prompted by a question from me, Keith Citrine ticked off the reasons he’d patronize the Lumbery, including his admiration for Friedland, the convenience of not having to drive to South Portland and Lumbery’s commitment to buying Maine wood.

“He is a small business and he’s supporting other Maine businesses. I like that a lot,” Citrine says.