Terms of Use

01 Agreement

These terms are between you and National Lumber & Building Materials Co., an independent Rhode Island corporation. Using this site means you accept them. If you are using it for a company, you are confirming you may accept them on that company's behalf.

These terms cover the website. A signed quotation, purchase order or supply agreement covers an actual order, and where the two disagree, the order documents win.

02 What this site is

This site is a catalog and a set of request tools. You can browse products, assemble a project list, run a preliminary estimate, and send us drawings so an estimator can build you a real takeoff and quote.

It is not a store. There is no cart, no checkout and no online payment, by design: every list is priced as a project, in volume, by a person. Adding items to a project list places no order and reserves no stock.

03 Takeoffs and quotes

Framing takeoffs and package quotes are free and carry no obligation. If our number does not work for you, keep the list. We prepare them to earn the material order, and that is the whole arrangement.

What a quote binds

A quotation is an offer to supply on the terms and for the validity window stated on that quotation. Once that window passes, the numbers lapse. Lumber and engineered wood move with the market, and a quote that is weeks old is a historical document rather than a price.

Quantities

A takeoff is our reading of the drawings you sent. It is prepared carefully by estimators using professional takeoff software, and it remains an estimate of what the set calls for. You are responsible for reviewing the list against your drawings, your means and methods, and your waste factors before you order. If a sheet was missing, illegible or superseded, tell us and we will re-run the affected assemblies.

Revisions

Send the revision cloud and we re-run what it touches, mark what changed, and price the delta. Changes to scope after an order is placed are handled as a change order, not absorbed silently.

04 Prices shown on this site

Figures in the price book and on product pages are preliminary references for planning. They are not offers, and nothing on this site is a firm price until a National Lumber estimator issues a quotation for your project.

• Market reference is a published retail benchmark captured for New England at build time. It varies by store, ZIP code, colour, brand and availability, and we never present it as a guaranteed competitor price.
• Retail, contractor and project tiers are our own reference levels, not a promise that your project lands on any particular one.
• "Starting at" on doors, windows and skylights means the base configuration. Size, style, glazing, grids, frame and jamb are configured at quote and change the price.
• Sales tax and delivery are confirmed with the quotation, not included in listed figures.

Product photography is representative studio imagery and the technical drawings are generated from each product's specification line. Confirm sizes, grades and brands on your project quote rather than from a picture.

05 The AI estimator

The plan reader at /estimate is a beta feature. A model reads your sheets, our assembly rules count the materials, and the result is priced from our price book. It is genuinely useful and it is genuinely not an estimator.

What it is not

• It is not a quote. It is a planning-level figure.
• It is not for construction. The redrawn plan sheet is a vector redraw of what was measured, issued preliminary, and no one should build from it.
• It is not the last word. The model misses things a working estimator catches. That is why every AI list and its pricing is verified by a person before anything is quoted or ordered.

The parameter-based ballpark estimator models a simple rectangular building and is good for budgeting and sanity checks. Figure roughly ±15% on a typical plan, and more on anything unusual.

Do not rely on either tool for bidding, ordering, permitting or structural decisions. Send the drawings and get the free human takeoff, which is the path we recommend in every case.

Beta limits

Free AI reads are capped per user and per day so the beta stays available to everyone. A read that fails does not spend your quota. We may change, pause or withdraw the feature at any time.

06 Your plans and your rights in them

Your drawings stay yours. Sending them to us transfers no ownership.

By sending a set you confirm you have the right to send it, and you grant us a limited, non-exclusive licence to open, read, measure and copy it for one purpose: preparing your takeoff, quote and package, and supporting the resulting order. We do not publish your drawings, share them with other customers, or use them as marketing material.

If your set is under an NDA or a confidentiality obligation that the AI path in clause 05 would breach, do not use the AI estimator. Send the set to the estimating team instead and tell us about the restriction.

07 We are not your engineer

We quote and supply what your structural drawings call for, and we will flag anything that looks off to us. Structural design, member sizing, connection design and code compliance stay with your engineer and architect of record.

Nothing on this site, in a takeoff, or in a conversation with our team is engineering, architectural or code advice, and none of it substitutes for a licensed professional stamping your drawings. We do not play engineer, and you should not want a supplier who does.

08 Orders, deposits and delivery

An order exists when you approve a quotation and meet the deposit terms stated on it. Procurement starts after approval and deposit, and the deposit terms are project-specific rather than a standing published figure.

Availability is confirmed at quote and can change between quotation and order, particularly on engineered lumber, windows and doors. We flag lead times we know about rather than discovering them for you later.

Deliveries are coordinated to jobsites across Rhode Island and staged by phase where the site allows. Broader New England is by arrangement depending on package size. Site access, unloading conditions and a place to put the material are yours to arrange, and delivery windows depend on them.

09 Acceptable use

Use the site for its purpose. Do not:

• Scrape, bulk-download or systematically copy the catalog, the price book or the product pages.
• Automate requests against the estimate endpoint, or work around the quotas, App Check or rate limits protecting it.
• Upload malware, or files you have no right to send us.
• Probe, disrupt or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site or its backing services.
• Republish our pricing as your own, or present our references as a competitor's prices.

We may block access that breaks these rules.

10 Our content and marks

The text, layout, drawings, photography and catalog data on this site belong to National Lumber & Building Materials Co. or are used with permission. You may read them, print them and quote them for your own project. You may not republish them commercially.

"National Lumber & Building Materials Co." and our mark are ours, with a trademark application pending at the USPTO. We are an independent Rhode Island corporation and are not affiliated with any other company operating under a similar name. Third-party brand names in the catalog belong to their owners and appear so you can identify the product.

11 Availability and beta features

We do not promise the site is always up. It may be unavailable for maintenance, for a provider outage, or without warning.

Anything marked beta or in development, including the AI estimator, the project workspace preview and National Lumber Online, is exactly that. Features can change or disappear, preview data is illustrative, and nothing you do in a preview places an order. Today every takeoff runs through our estimating team, and uploads reach them by email.

12 Disclaimers and liability

The site and its estimating tools are provided as they are, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the fullest extent the law allows. We do not warrant that quantities produced by an automated tool are accurate, complete or fit for your project.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, National Lumber is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits, lost bids, delay costs or reworked material, arising from use of this site or reliance on a preliminary figure from it. Our total liability arising from your use of the site is limited to $100.

This clause limits liability for the website and its tools. It does not limit our obligations under an accepted quotation or supply contract, which are governed by those documents, and it does not exclude anything that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

13 Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Rhode Island, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Disputes arising from them go to the state or federal courts sitting in Rhode Island, and both sides consent to that jurisdiction. If a court finds any clause unenforceable, the rest stands.

14 Changes and contact

When these terms change, the issue date and revision letter in the title block change with them. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the revised terms. A change here never alters a quotation already issued to you.

National Lumber & Building Materials Co.
Rhode Island corporation, online-first
nationallumberri@gmail.com
(774) 488-7976

See also the Privacy Policy (Sheet NL-90).