ELGIN — A new retail lumber store is opening in Elgin.

The Union County Chamber of Commerce hosts a ribbon-cutting to mark the opening of Kennon Lumber Co., 810 Inkwood St., Elgin. The ceremony is at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 5. More details will be available on Kennon’s Facebook page.

“The public is warmly invited to attend our soft opening and browse through our beautiful showroom and outside planter displays,” Tyler Kennon, sole proprietor said. “Every wall inside our building will display the cedar products that we offer.”

There will be a drawing that day so the public may enter their names for the door prize, a fully assembled cedar planter with lattice valued at $150. The winner of the prize will be announced at 5 p.m. on Kennon’s Facebook page.

After the soft opening, normal business hours will be Tuesday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and he will adjust that as needed. The store number is 541-805-1190.

“My hope is that the business can keep busy enough so that he can employ a couple of people and be open six days a week and regular business hours,” he said.

Kennon hails from La Grande, and in February, he purchased the 4,000 square-foot building on 3.8 acres on Inkwood Street from Elgin High School. Kennon Lumber occupies half of the building.

“We’ll see how things go after the first year in business,” Kennon said. “Then we might get another retailer in the other half of the building, maybe someone who deals with farm feed and hardware. If that can happen, that would be great because right now people in Elgin have to travel to La Grande to buy a box of screws.”

He said he has worked with lumber his entire life, but as far as the retail side of lumber is concerned, this venture is a first for him.

“Prior to this, I worked as a handyman, small contractor doing building maintenance for a lot of AirBNBs and commercial structures,” Kennon said. “I’m also a farmer, rancher, horse rider — all of those things, and I have livestock and horses.”

Kennon and his wife, Kylie, and children relocated from La Grande to 40 acres on Cricket Flat, where they live in a 750 square foot cabin “that is fully sided in our cedar siding,” Kennon said.

Kennon has a private investor, formerly from Union County, who owns and operates a lumber mill in Northern California. This mill supplies Kennon Lumber Co. with cedar, pine and fir wood products.

“We can do custom orders, and I can submit them to the mill and have it up here in a couple of weeks,” Kennon said. “That’s interesting to bring up here because I do not see any real wood siding up here anymore, and I’d really like to bring some of it back.”

The couple also involve their son, Seth Kennon, in their family business. He makes the cedar picnic tables that are for sale at Kennon Lumber Company and manages the store at times.

“He is homeschooled, a math whiz, and a talented craftsman,” his father said.

In the future, Kennon Lumber Co. will create a website with a full catalog listing of products and pictures of all its wood products.

“I would say that about 75% of what I have will be cedar products of all sorts, including all kinds of cedar fencing in every shape, form, thickness and size,” Kennon said.

He also will sell cedar dimensional lumber and all kinds of cedar siding, interior and exterior that a builder or contractor would possibly want. Kennon Lumber also will sell some blue stained pine, some board and batten pine, and some fir products, but the majority, Kennon said, will be cedar siding and interior wall finishes.

The California mill will send Kennon its off-cuts, in-cuts, and scrap pieces so that Kennon and his son can build furniture, including planter boxes, Adirondack chairs, benches, swings, picnic tables and chicken coops. Cedar is a popular choice of lumber because it is insect resistant and rot resistant.

“We’re big in the gardening and greenhouse stuff, too,” Kennon said. “Because we’re making these things out of smaller pieces from the mill, we can build these things more affordably.”

The inventory is rolling in. Kennon had 10 loads of lumber in from the California mill coming in before April 5. He will see how the first six months of business goes and order more inventory if needed.

Inside the store, its walls are covered with sample displays of cedar paneling and siding for homes and cabin construction. Kennon sells cedar cabins that buyers can put together because they are notched and pre-drilled. They are ideal for small sheds, accessory dwelling units and custom ordered larger sizes of cabins. He offers delivery of orders to builders and contractors on site when requested.

For more information about Kennon Lumber Co.’s lumber products, call or text at 541-805-1190 or use Facebook Messenger or email at kennonlumber@gmail.com.

“We’d like to invite the public to come in, meet us and see our showroom,” Kennon said.