Reclaimed materials in Denver: a complete buyer's guide.

Denver has a real reclaimed materials market, and prices in it vary by a factor of five for material that looks similar in a photograph. This guide is what we would tell you if you walked into our yard and asked where to start. Every price below is what we actually charge as of August 2026.

What reclaimed material costs in Denver

Here is the whole price list in one place. Board foot pricing means thickness × width × length in inches, divided by 144.

Reclaimed wood and flooring

Boxcar and cargo flooring are two different materialsand people mix them up constantly. Boxcar came out of a rail freight car and is2.25in thick, sold by the whole board. Cargo came out of asemi-truck trailer and is 1.25in thick, sold by the linear foot. If you are picking between them, thickness is the deciding factor.

Boxcar flooring is the decking out of antique rail freight cars — rock maple or oak, 2.25 inches thick, 12 inches wide. That thickness is the point: a single board is a finished countertop with no substrate and no lamination. $200 for an 8ft board, $240 for a 9ft. Nobody builds wooden boxcar floors any more, so the supply is finite.

Cargo flooring — million mile oak came out of semi-truck trailers, which get a new floor at roughly a million miles. 12 inches wide, 1.25 thick, $14 per linear foot in 6, 8, 10 and 12 foot lengths, and we cut it to size on site for a small charge. Three types: factory seconds with no bolt holes for workbenches and cutting boards, reclaimed oak with the holes and the character, and reclaimed maple that finishes noticeably lighter.

Live edge slabs are Colorado trees milled by Colorado sawyers, all kiln dried. $8 for pine up to $35 for the best walnut. Kiln drying matters more than people expect — a green slab will cup and check after you have already built with it.

Barnwood comes in 20 square foot bundles from $90. Quarter-inch stock goes up with construction adhesive and brad nails; you do not need to hit every stud.

Transit boards got their silver-gray patina hauling steel tubing across the plains. $12 per board foot. Do not sand the silver off — it is a thin surface layer and it will vanish under a belt sander in seconds.

Beams and mantels

Beams are where reclaimed material genuinely beats new, because you cannot buy a new old-growth timber at any price.

Hand-hewn barn beams at $14 per board foot are the classic mantel: axe scallops across the face, mortise pockets, peg holes. Ours are pre-sanded, so you can oil and hang them the day you get home rather than spending a weekend with a wire brush.

1911 Union Station Douglas fir at $6 per board foot is the best value in the yard by a distance. These held a Denver building up for over a century. Old-growth fir has twenty or more growth rings per inch where modern plantation fir has a handful — it is denser, more stable, and carries an amber patina no stain reproduces.

Reclaimed oak beams at $8 per board foot are the most texture per dollar we sell — heavily gouged industrial stock, 5 to 10 inches square in 8 to 18 foot lengths.

To hang any of these, you want a floating bracket. The bracket bolts to studs or masonry, steel rods project out, and you drill matching holes in the back of the beam so no hardware shows. Brackets run $65 to $165.

COR-TEN steel

Weathering steel goes orange on the surface and stays sound underneath, which is why architects specify it. Worth being clear on one point though: the rust is not a seal. It slows things down, it does not stop them. Bare steel keeps corroding, just slowly.

Ours are exhaust port baffles out of a decommissioned coal power plant — we call them coal-fired steel sheets. The corrugation was there to shed water so the plant could recycle it, and the banded colouring is calcium the water left behind, which is why no two match.$3.50 per square foot, in 26×36in, 26×42in, 32×42in and 36×36in sheets with roughly 400 square feet available in each size. No minimums.

Against corrugated tin it wins on every count: flat, rigid, weldable, and free of old fastener holes. Two things to plan for. Unsealed sheets keep rusting, so clear-coat them if you want the colour to hold or if anyone will brush past them indoors. And runoff stains concrete — put a drip edge under it or accept the marking as part of the look.

Commercial carpet tile

The single best value in salvage. Gently used commercial tile from local office buildings at $0.25 to $0.70 per square foot, against $3 to $6 for new. Sizes are 18×18, 20×20, 24×24, 12×36 and 18×36 inches.

For a basement, tile beats broadloom carpet outright: if one tile gets wet or stained you lift it and drop in a replacement instead of replacing the room. Installation is pressure- sensitive adhesive or tabs on a clean flat subfloor, cut with a utility knife. No stretching, no tack strip, no power tools.

To estimate: room length × width in feet, divided by tile coverage. A 24×24in tile covers 4 square feet, so a 600 sq ft basement takes about 150 tiles plus ten percent for cuts.

Used artificial turf

Retired sports-field turf, sold by the roll, from $0.43 per square foot. Nothing else covers ground that cheaply.

The logistics matter more than the price here. Rolls weigh 1,100 to 1,400 pounds. You need a flatbed truck or an open trailer with no roof — a pickup cannot be loaded. We load with a forklift; you bring ratchet straps. Trailers rent from Home Depot and U-Haul.

Every roll has field lines and some leftover infill. Soccer turf generally has fewer lines than football turf. Sizes are approximate and cannot be guaranteed exactly, so buy with a margin. Cut it at home from the backing side with a utility knife.

How to tell real reclaimed wood from fake distressing

This is the question we get most from people who have been shopping around.

• Look for irregularity. Real hand-hewing leaves overlapping scallop marks that vary in depth and never repeat. Machine distressing has a rhythm to it that you can spot across a room once you know to look for it.
• Look for evidence of a previous job. Mortise pockets, peg holes, notch cuts, nail stains, bolt holes. A beam that held a building up has joinery cut into it.
• Look at the checking. Natural drying checks follow the grain and run along the length. Cuts made with a tool cross the grain.
• Look at the growth rings. Old-growth timber has tight, closely spaced rings — often twenty or more per inch. Fast-grown modern lumber has wide spacing you can see from several feet away.
• Ask where it came from. A seller who cannot tell you the building, the barn, or the field probably does not know. We can tell you for almost everything on our racks.

How to get it home

For lumber, beams and slabs, a pickup or trailer handles most of it. Boards run to 20 feet, so measure your bed and bring a flag if you will be hanging over. For turf you need a flatbed or open trailer, full stop. Carpet tile and tarps go in any vehicle, though tile is heavier by volume than people expect.

We load everything with a forklift. Bring ratchet straps regardless of what you are collecting.