Different wood varieties for different jobs. I’m in Colorado so there’s low humidity, but I’ve never had a problem with the dimensional lumber at Home Depot or Lowe’s. In fact, cheap bastard that I am, I made my queen size bed with captain’s drawers and raised panels out of dimensional lumber (2X4s and 2X6s) from Lowe’s. Its been over a year and the bed is stable and, frankly, beautiful. Mind you I was especially choosy about the boards because they were going to be prominent in my bedroom. The bed is mainly mortise and tenon construction and the raised panels (3 on the footboard and two on the headboard) had to fit snuggly, but still float in the slots. Therefore, they needed to be stable. I shop at both stores all the time and am quite happy.
I picked up the Green/Brown from a real lumber yard (across the street from a huge HD - they were doing something right). I asked for 2x6x16 in pressure treated. Was asked “brown or green?”. Had never heard of brown. This was a floor for a basement apartment. The shop had chunks of brown (much darker brown than HD, BTW) and green tacked to a rafter. A contractor raised his hand, pointed to each and said “Structural” and “Non-structural”.
I am thinking of building a pool house - thought I could at least get pressure-treated for the sills and KD for studs and certain trim.
I’m sure there is still a real lumberyard somewhere in Sacto - I found one which does only redwood (if only I had the money), but will keep digging.
Mu truck can haul 8’ with the tailgate and cab closed - but only if I pass them through into the cab.
The grading of the wood is done BEFORE which bath - green or brown - is applied.
I always suspected even the green stuff at HD was bottom of the barrel - which is why I bought those 2x6s at the real yard
Non-structural PT 2x6s? What an…interesting concept.
Since I just googled Brown Pressure Treated Wood, I consider myself an expert. Everything I read suggested it’s just regular PT with brown dye added for cosmetic purposes.
I’m betting that your contractor mistook what you wanted and pointed out something like Trex as being non structural.
Painting contractor here, and I wouldn’t touch Behr paint with a ten-foot pole.
A couple of points - first, painting is labor intensive and most of the cost you’re paying is for labor, not materials. So it really doesn’t make much sense to cut costs by paying a few bucks less for materials. Since a paint store such as SW carries a vastly larger line of coatings than a big box store, I can get paint for less than half of what I’d pay for the basic comparable Behr product. They sell many products that aren’t on display - BuilderCraft and Sher-Scrub are two of their lower-end interior paints but they’re never on the shelves. Ditto for all their commercial and industrial products. I can get interior paint like that for under $15.00 per gallon, and crappy exterior paint for about $20.00. But I very rarely do.
Although mostly I use ProMar 200 ($24.00 per gallon at my cost and vastly better than Behr) Duration ($35.00) and sometimes Emerald ($47.00). Plus SW carries a huge line of specialized primers and tools, as do other paint stores that cater to painting contractors.
The paint is not exactly equal. I believe Home Depot and similar stores do offer revolving credit accounts to contractors, so that’s not a factor either.
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aceplace57** is spot on in his assessment, IMHO. Handymen who also paint, or the types of painters who advertise on craigslist, probably buy Behr or whatever Lowes sells.
/nitpick. 
Anyway, I like Menards. Menards rocks.
What would a non-structural 2X6 be used for? I guess when you want the best finish work, go for the brown PT 2X6’s
I don’t buy that brown vs green either.
We bought fluorescent fictures for the laundry room last week. We didn’t need anything fancy, just light. We didn’t get the least expensive, but it was still inexpensive.
Neither fixture worked. One just didn’t light. The other had a screw through a wire. We didn’t even try.
When we went to take them back, they told us, “Oh, these shouldn’t have been put back on the shelf. They came back yesterday with the same problem.”
I’m guessing the person who know the problem was the one putting them back.
We usually go to a local hardware store that still had stuff from when they moved in. The place is a rabbit warren. It’s made up of several stores that had common walls in the past, but as they bought them they just knocked holes in the walls. It’s a fire hazzard and a trip and fall waiting to happen, but we’ve never had to take anything back to them.
Paint- I’m not surprised that a knowledgeable painting contractor buys paint elsewhere; really, if I’m hiring a trained professional to do a job, I expect them to use the best materials to complement their higher skill level, and I expect the finished product to look like I paid a skilled worker to do the best job possible.
But for 98% of my homeowner DIY work, like the rest of society? The Lowes and HD paint brands are going to be sufficient. It’s not terrible, it’s just not at that higher level.
Tools- I don’t mind buying the store brand for some things, depending on the tool. About 30 years ago I bought a pair of channel lock pliers out of a bin at Odd-Lot- one of those stores that sells overstock off-brand stuff. I needed the tool, I was poor, and it was there. I just replaced it about 6 months ago, it has worked just fine for me for over 3 decades. Point being, depending on what you want to do with it, a cheaper (read “less expensive”) brand will often be just fine.
On the other hand, a precision tool like a set of chisels or lathe knives will generally be a ‘you get what you pay for’ purchase.
Back when I had rental properties, I was pleased to discover that Behr interior paint was a vastly superior product to anything near its price range. It was enough better that it actually convinced me that all cheapish paint is not alike, as I had previously thought.
Recently though, I purchased their most expensive (Behr Ultra, I think) exterior paint, and it was complete crap. I even splurged for top-quality brushes. It dried so fast that every brush stroke showed, it remained translucent no matter how many coats I applied, and I was angry enough to return it. They refunded me and even gave me a different “lesser” Behr paint for free, but the hours of work I wasted atop a tall ladder trying to get that garbage to work cannot be replaced.
Not to dispute the authority of a random contractor at the lumberyard, but I’ve never heard of any distinction between structural and non-structural lumber of any kind. With pressure-treated, the distinction I do know about is between lumber rated for ground contact and no ground contact. It’s not a question of color, it’s a matter of the label, usually on the end of the board. I can see how someone would construe this as structural versus non-structural, though those aren’t terms I would use here. Again, this is not a Home Depot thing. Their sins are many, but this isn’t one of them.
Contractor here. I disagree with this post. In my current situation I use different kinds of paint. I use Behr and I also shop at SW when appropriate. There is no major difference between the two. Typical of folks who don’t care for Behr, the above poster just claims it’s bad without really going into specifics. I use both brands all the time and I don’t notice the difference.
What I do notice is a price difference especially in the 5 gallon sizes. Also SW gives me a better contractor deal. It is very common in the business for contractors to specify product that they get better deals/ kickbacks on.