You've decided to hire a tree service to cut down your trees so that you can build a house out of the wood. When working with a tree service to turn your trees to sawn and dressed timber, there are several things you need to keep in mind. Here are five tips to help you:

1. Order some sawn but not dressed timber

You can use sawn timber for a range of things in the home you are building. You can use it for floor joists, roof beams or other structural elements of your home. Sawn timber is roughly cut, meaning less labour is involved. As a result, you save money by using sawn timber in as many applications as possible.

2. Dress timber on edges or single sides as needed

Some of your timber, however, will need to be dressed. Dressing timber is the processing of finishing it so that its edges are smooth, flat and even. Typically dressed timber is used anywhere the wood will be visible in your home.

However, you don't necessarily need to dress all sides of your timber. You only need to dress the sides that are visible. You can leave the hidden sides rough, and ultimately, you will save money by only ordering dressing where you need it.

3. Use quartering when you want great looking timber

Ask your tree service to quarter the trees for some of the timber you are dressing. Quartering sections the tree trunk into four pieces, and any boards cut from a quartered tree feature the tree's age rings at right angles to the board's edges. This cutting technique creates a very beautiful look for timber that you display.

However, if you don't care about the design of the wood, you may want to avoid quartering. In most cases, quartering produces fewer pieces of timber than other cutting methods.

4. Decide how much sawn or dressed wood you need before the tree service starts cutting

When you dress sawn wood, it loses some of its volume. Once it is sanded and shaped, it is typically smaller than it was when it was first sawn. If you have all of the wood sawn to the same size and shape and then you only dress some of it, your pieces of timber will not be the same size, and that can cause compatibility issues for the builders.

However, if you decide how many sawn pieces and how many dressed timber you need before the tree service starts cutting, they can ensure that the timber going to be dressed is slightly larger than the timber that is going to be used without dressing. Then, ultimately, those planks end up being the same size when that is needed.

If you don't have timber on your land that you want to use, you can also get sawn and dressed timber from a place like Australian Treated Pine.