Can you give me a short synopsis (or long if you care to) of the reasons why you don’t love it anymore?
I didn’t notice this comment before. So I guess I’ve heard one complaint now. Though I can’t fathom why.
Because I spend *every *weekend in the summer spray washing, caulking, staining, painting chink, etc. While perched atop scaffolding or a ladder. And then there’s Carpenter Bees, rotting wood, epoxying, etc. I am a slave to this damn place.
Ah! Pine no doubt. Ward Cabinshave no chinking, and as I mentioned above, the White Cedar resists all attempts at invasion from bacteria, fungus, and insects (except for the damn carpenter bees, but I had those in my old stick frame house). Last year I bleached and cleaned the back of the house where it’s been sunburnt. I put teak oil on it, and it looks so gorgeous now I have to do the rest of the house. If you use crap like Thompsons you are wasting your money. You need real oil, not wax dissolved in alcohol. That will stop a lot of rot and insect infiltration. As for the mud (chinking), I’ve heard there are some good long lasting products out there, but I have no experience with them.
I have lived in my log home for 3 years. I love it. My fiance loves it. Everyone who visits our house loves it (even kids trick-or-treating and food delivery people).
However, it can be a pain in the ass.
I don’t know what kind of wood it is but since the house is over 60 years old and doesn’t have a rot problem, I’m guessing not pine. However, we do need to re-chink the entire damn house this summer. Luckily my fiance’s parents have him a pneumatic caulking gun for Christmas and a compressor for his birthday.
We only had minor issues with getting it appraised. Eventually they just compared it with other houses with similar builds, if not similar materials.
Insurance was almost a deal breaker. Make sure that someone insures log homes where you want to build. We are stuck with our insurance company because they are the only ones we could find who insured cabins.
Also find out how close where you want to build is to the nearest fire department. It makes a difference in how much your insurance will cost (assuming you can find insurance in the first place). If the place you want to build has a lot of cabins, you’ll probably be ok on the insurance. Our town doesn’t have many and the few others are just log exterior.
We have rounded exterior and smooth (well, flat and rough) interior with a lot of beams on the inside. I believe there is a small amount of insulation between the exterior and interior and that the interior is made up of slats of the same wood as the exterior. I don’t think it was made from a kit though. We were told it was custom built by the guy we bought it from (well, from his estate).
You may be tempted to put in a regular fireplace. Don’t. Get a wood stove or an insert. Our fireplace is beautiful but it’s pretty much useless for heating the majority of the living room (and is not helped by the fact that we have a loft and cathedral ceilings so all our heat just goes up. If you plan on having smaller rooms though, a fireplace would be fine. If you want an open floor plan, something with a blower would be nice.
Hmm… Oh yeah. Bugs. When we moved in there was evidence of carpenter ants and bees but no termites. We had Terminix and a structural engineer come in. They confirmed that the problem was already gone and that the structure was sound. We signed up for regular treatements with Terminix. This is good because if you are certified to have no termites and remain a customer with them, you will not have to pay for any termites that show up later on (if they do). And they’re good about dealing with other pests (our biggest issues so far has been mice).
Log homes are incredibly creaky.
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Serious great info and advice here, everybody. I’m going to thoroughly investigate this from every angle to make sure it remains a dream if I do it!
I had to carry much more insurance to cover replacement cost than I paid when I first bought the cabin. And even with that they only based the price on replacement of a pine cabin. In the mean time, even after the housing bubble collapse, it’s now worth something comparable to replacement cost.
Check your options for replacing the chinking (that’s not really chinking just ‘mud’ or ‘caulk’). Again, I haven’t had to do it, but I’ve seen several references to modern long lasting materials.
That’s a good idea. The chinking we have has been sitting in the basement for a very long time (they left all the leftovers so we have logs and planks too - and a custom built door they decided not to use). I know it’s still good because the we had to have one small log replaced because of water damage (broken gutter - before we moved in so they paid for it, not us) and he was delighted to find the original stuff still here. If that stuff is as old as the house, there are probably better options out there, even if it does still work.