I'm building a bathhouse. Most of the wood I've used has come from scrap piles from construction sites and wood I found on the street. I did buy some 2x4s to build the walls, but other than that, I've built it from discarded materials.
The other day I spotted a pressure treated 2x8x8 in front of a house. I was driving by and saw it laying near the street in front of a gate. I stopped my car to get a good look at it. I was eyeing it when a man popped up from the far end of the garage roof and looked at me. He was working on the roof, and was hidden from view until he stood up. I waved to him and sped away. He didn't wave back. Maybe he wanted to keep the wood. I didn't know. It was a dubious situation.
A contractor has been working on the house. I'm thinking when the contractor's finished with his work the house is going to be flipped. I'd found some nice pieces of old growth wood that was ripped out of the interior of the house days before.
That night I woke up at three in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I read for a while, but come about four-thirty I decided to walk up the hill to see if the pressure treated wood was still there. It was. I snatched it without much fuss. I was walking away when a small dog from a house across the street started to bark. For a moment I was afraid somebody was going to wake up and look out the window, but I quickly realized that no one was going to get out of bed to see what the dog was barking at. Small dogs bark all the time.
So there I was walking down the street with a 2x8x8 underneath my arm. I was carrying it like a surfboard and hoping no cars drove by. I was going to to ditch the wood by the curb if I saw headlights.
It was a peaceful morning. There wasn't much going on, but I could still hear cars in the distance driving on the freeway. That's a sound that never stops in LA.
