The building-products side is contracting: 12 distributors, mills and plants closing in 2026
Twelve US building-products distributors, sawmills, cabinet plants, tile and window manufacturers closed, wound down or filed for bankruptcy this year, across 15 states. Unlike the independent stores closing on main streets, these businesses sell to builders, and what happens to them tracks what is being built.
Why this side matters more than the store side
A hardware store can close because its owner is 70. A door plant closes because somebody stopped ordering doors. Doors, windows, cabinets and dimensional lumber are bought when something is being built or renovated, so this is the part of the trade that moves with construction demand rather than with the owner's age.
What is being built is falling. Single-family housing starts fell 0.2% in June to 895,000, down 3.2% year over year, while the headline increase that month came entirely from multifamily, up 76.2% (NAHB, July 17). The Census Bureau reported total starts down 2.6% in August to a 1,275,000 annual rate, a second consecutive monthly decline and the lowest since October 2025, with permits down 2.7%.
The largest players are feeling it. US LBM, one of the biggest building-products distributors in the country, reported first-quarter sales of $1.38 billion, down almost 14% year over year, and EBITDA of $14 million, about 82% below the same period in 2025 (Bloomberg Law).
One closing says so directly. An announcement to employees from Dal-Tile vice president Claudio Caselli, posted to social media, put the closing of its Florence, Alabama tile plant down to changes in the "housing market," the TimesDaily reported. The company had not given an official reason.
What it means
For anyone tracking construction, this is the layer where demand shows up before it reaches the housing data: a door plant and a distributor feel the order book months before a starts number is published, and neither closes over a single soft quarter.
For anyone with space or assets in play, it is a supply of large industrial buildings and plant equipment coming to market in places that do not absorb either quickly.
What would change this reading: if starts recover and this side keeps closing, the cause is something other than demand, most likely consolidation. We will say so on this page when we can see it.
What closed
Distribution. Ohio Valley Supply, a Cincinnati distributor of specialty building materials, stopped serving customers on July 31 after 78 years, with warehouses in Columbus, Ohio and York, Pennsylvania. The company was employee-owned and gave no reason for the shutdown.
In Chicago, the operation Do it Best built out of True Value's assets is being wound down: TV Hardware Distribution, the subsidiary formed after the 2024 acquisition, is ending operations with 116 jobs, 101 of them on October 9 and the remaining 15 in January 2027. Do it Best is also consolidating the distribution network it bought, closing Springfield, Oregon (62 jobs) and Kingman, Arizona before the end of 2026, and Montgomery, New York, with about 300 jobs, in the second quarter of 2027.
Plants. Legacy Cabinets in Eastaboga, Alabama closed with close to 400 jobs. Owens Corning is closing its door plant in Walkerton, Indiana, with 130. Showcase Window and Door closed its Missouri City, Texas plant on September 21, with 61. James Hardie Building Products closed its fiber-cement siding plant in Dorchester County, South Carolina, with 78 jobs, part of the same January announcement that closed its Fontana, California plant with 94. Dal-Tile, owned by Mohawk Industries, has stopped operating its tile plant in Florence, Alabama; a letter from Mohawk to city officials says the plant will permanently close on February 26, 2027, with 144 jobs lost.
A bankruptcy that did not hold. Armored Impact Windows & Doors, a Boca Raton window company, filed for Chapter 11 on March 3 in the Southern District of Florida, case 26-12660. The case was dismissed in late June for continuing loss to the estate and no reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation.
Mills. Southern Parallel Forest Products closed its Albertville, Alabama lumber plant with about 60 jobs. Lumbra Hardwoods in Milo, Maine closed its sawmill on April 30 after 74 years and 20 jobs; co-owner Stephen Lumbra told the Bangor Daily News the mill could not sustain rising electricity and machinery costs. The mills now have their own page: sawmill and wood-products mill closures in 2026.
An exit. Wren Kitchens, the British kitchen manufacturer and retailer, closed its 15 US showrooms across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on April 23, along with its Wilkes-Barre manufacturing, with more than 300 jobs lost across the US operation.
Deep cuts at two cabinet plants
Two more cabinet makers filed WARN notices this fall. Neither notice, as reported, says the plant is closing, so neither is in the 12.
- American Woodmark, the Winchester, Virginia cabinet maker, is removing its assembly operations at its plant in Gas City, Indiana. It will lay off 207 employees permanently, starting December 5 and running to January 8, 2027, Fox 59 reported.
- MasterBrand Cabinets is laying off 391 workers at its plant in Kinston, North Carolina on November 27, after notifying the state on September 28, WNCT reported. The company expanded in Kinston in 2021, when the state announced it would add more than 450 jobs over five years.
Neither company gave a reason. If either plant is reported as closing, it moves into the count.
Meanwhile, at the big boxes
Neither Lowe's nor Home Depot is closing stores in any number this year. Both cut at head office instead.
- Lowe's filed a WARN notice in February to reduce 600 corporate and support roles nationwide, as the chief executive described an outlook that "remains cautious given persistent volatility in housing macro". In North Carolina that landed as 178 jobs at the Mooresville headquarters and 49 at the Lowe's Technology Hub in Charlotte.
- Home Depot cut about 800 jobs tied to its store support center near Atlanta, announced January 28. It closed one building in our file, the Rockville, Maryland design center, where 85 employees sought new roles.
The geography is worth noticing. The big-box reductions are office jobs in two metros, Charlotte-Mooresville and Atlanta. The plants and mills closing are in Eastaboga, Albertville and Florence, Alabama; Walkerton, Indiana; Missouri City, Texas; Dorchester County, South Carolina; Milo, Maine. The same slowdown reads as a headcount decision at two corporate campuses and as a closed plant in a town where it was the employer.
What we counted, and what we left out
Twelve businesses, counted as businesses rather than sites, each a record with a street address, a source link and a confidence flag in our weekly file. Where one company closed more than one site, as James Hardie and Do it Best did, it is counted once. The big boxes are not in the 12: their corporate layoffs closed no building, and their one closed building belongs to a national chain rather than to this trade. The two cabinet plants above are not in the 12 either: their notices cut jobs but do not say the plant closes.
Three entries that appeared in an earlier draft are out. Mill River Lumber in Clarendon, Vermont closed in 2024 and Rathbun Lumber in Presque Isle, Maine closed and was auctioned in 2025; both surfaced only in backward-looking mentions inside 2026 articles. A Souderton, Pennsylvania cabinetry liquidation auction turned out to be an auction listing rather than a reported closure, and the firm it was attributed to is still trading.
Independent hardware stores are not here. They are a separate story with a separate cause, in the companion brief, the 19 independent stores closing this year. Anything whose closing happened before 2026 is out.
Records come from local news reporting, state WARN notices, bankruptcy dockets and company announcements. This is a living page: when the count changes, the page changes and the change is listed here.
Updated: October 19, 2026
Changelog:
- October 19, 2026: added Dal-Tile's Florence, Alabama tile plant (closing February 26, 2027, 144 jobs), from the 2026-10-17 edition; 11 businesses become 12, still 15 states. Added an uncounted note on job cuts at American Woodmark in Gas City, Indiana and MasterBrand Cabinets in Kinston, North Carolina.
- October 12, 2026: added a link to the new page on sawmill and wood-products mill closures. Counts unchanged.
- September 20, 2026: first published at 11 businesses in 15 states, from the 2026-09-19 edition.
Street names are from our records; house numbers are held for subscribers. The Store Closure Watch file for the week of October 17, 2026 holds 368 records. As of October 19, 2026.