Best Way to Store Lumber?

Hello!

I recently finished my first big DIY project remodeling/renovating our upstairs apartment. I have a good amount of various lumber pieces, I would like to keep to use for future projects. But I won’t want them to warp and become unusable.

I live in South East PA, so we have full on winters which are cold and dry, some nights even below freezing outside. And summers that are very humid and can hit 100° outside.

I have a rather large unfinished basement. Concrete floor, stone walls. about 700 square ft.

And I have my 7 ft x 7 ft shed out side.

As for the left over lumber. I have long pieces of baseboard and quarter round, some easily 8 ft. long. And even a big 5.5 ft x 2 ft slab from the old island I can definitely use to create a great furniture piece in the future as long as it doesn’t war and become unusable as a table top. I even have a door. All of these are shown in my photos below.

Yes, looks like nice left over pieces.  If it were me, I would leave them in my basement if the basement isn’t being used as the temp will stay more constant throughout the year than the shed.  It’s important to have them off the ground like you have them as moisture can come up through the concrete, so you are good there.  It’s hard to tell but that slab looks very thick, so I would have a hard time seeing that warp unless it sits there for years in the same place.  The biggest thing that usually warps when you have it leaning against a wall is plywood.

I redid my house and had trim, including quarter round in my basement for over a year.  I had the same set up where it was on wood every foot or so.  Nothing really warped.  Some of the quarter round was a little warped but it’s so flexible that once I nailed it to the base, it was fine.

I think the set up you have in your basement, you should be fine.  My only recommendation would be for the pile of wood you have on the floor is to try an organize it so the 1×6 are on top of each other, the base is on top of each other, with the longer pieces on the bottom and then the shorter pieces on top of the longer pieces.

Thanks Eric!

Yes that butcher block slab is about 1.5″ thick

Eric – TIA wrote:

2 hours ago, Eric – TIA said:

My only recommendation would be for the pile of wood you have on the floor is to try an organize it so the 1×6 are on top of each other, the base is on top of each other, with the longer pieces on the bottom and then the shorter pieces on top of the longer pieces.

I think I got lost with your description here a bit, can you clarify what you mean or use a picture to show?

Also I have horses, I can place the wood on but I figured that might cause it to bow downward since there would be no support in the middle?? I have 6 Horses I can uses. But it’s 3 pairs. 3 different brands and the different brands don’t match height wise with the others.

Also I found even more left over pieces, I put there pictures below. Just so anyone reading can understand the size/amount

Sorry, I think auto correction took over a little bit.

In regards to the horses, I would just have wood scraps on the ground like you have in the above picture where you have a piece every foot or so and then the wood you want, would be on that.  It doesn’t have to be far off the ground, just enough so air can move.  You might need the saw horses especially since you will not be using this wood for a while.

The picture you have above with the ( I am guessing it’s a 2×8 on the bottom, then a 1×6 on top of that), yes this is what I was trying to say, so the way you have it is perfect.  Just have the longer, wider pieces towards the bottom and then on top of those, start stacking the shorter pieces.

Hope this helps but if I didn’t explain it well, let me know.

Got it. Thanks a lot!