wood to use for slots?

those of you who have used wood slots on a wall, what kind of wood do you use. Regular hardwood or something else. I live in Tennessee. Most of the hardwood at Home Depot for example is too expensive to cover a f ew walls. Is there cheaper grades of wood available elsewhere. And what kind of wood, pine, oak etc? Thanks! Andrew

I used simple 1x4, 1x6, and 1x8 pine boards and then stained and polyed them (1 coat of stain, 3 coats of poly urethane). As you can see in my thread, it doesn't look half bad. You do have to make sure that all of the wood is straight though. That might entail going through and hand picking every piece. len