Guy at the lumber yard in Bakersfield told me my "cedar" was actually fir and I stood there holding a receipt like a clown

Angela Miller · 2026-09-22T11:15:05.57089+00:00

So last Tuesday I drive out to this yard off Rosedale to grab 6 boards for a simple fence gate repair, nothing fancy. The guy helping me, older fella with a pencil behind his ear, grabs one board, rubs his thumb across the grain, and says "son, this here is fir, somebody swapped the tag." I told him no way, I checked the label twice and it said western red cedar at $9 a board. He just shrugs and points at the end grain, and sure enough the color is way darker and the smell is wrong, cedar smells sweet and this stuff smelled like a pine tree air freshener. I stood there for a good minute holding my receipt like a total fool because I had already loaded 4 of the boards in my truck. He didn't rub it in either, just walked me back to the rack and pulled the real cedar and showed me the difference side by side. Now I feel like I've been buying the wrong wood for about a year and never noticed, which means my last two projects might be rotting out there right now. Anyone else ever get swapped boards and not catch it until some random guy at the yard calls it out?

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Guy at the lumber yard in Bakersfield told me my "cedar" was actually fir and I stood there holding a receipt like a clown | Builders Forum - Talk Freely