By: Carina Dempsey
In the evening of Thursday, June 14, we had the pleasure of hosting some members of the Portland Timbers team as part of the traditional Stand Together Week—to get their hands dirty with us at the ReBuilding Center and help us sort some of our latest donations of salvaged wood. Timbers’ defender Harold Hanson, retired player Nat Borchers , and video analyst Shannon Murray all came to the Rebuilding Center, spending a couple of hours in the lumberyard with several enthusiastic RBC staff members.
Throughout the evening, staff members Chris Larsen and Pete Heim showed the Timbers crew how to grade the historic lumber, and eventually they got to do the grading themselves. They helped organize the materials by standing up some tall pieces of cedar wood vertically against the wall in the lumber yard. The evening was filled with the grading, straightening, and sorting of wood, and smiles all around.
An old 2” x 4” pictured on the left and a modern 2” x 4” on the right.
Chris said that the Timbers really enjoyed their time at RBC and were excited to help out. He also said that they were very interested in learning about the history of the lumber in our store. In some cases, the lumber here has up to 100 years of growth rings, while the modern wood pieces only have about 10. This means that some of the wood from our store has the potential to be hundreds of years old, and still has never left Portland! Talk about sticking to your roots.
A huge thank you to the Portland Timbers for coming out to the Rebuilding Center, lending some helping hands, and showing their support. Be sure to drop by the lumberyard to check out some of the 2” x 4”s they sorted, and of course, go Timbers!