Winter brings out beauty of log cabins

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/01/2002 (8895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than any other time of the year, log cabins take on a special significance in winter. They are the Norman Rockwellesque representation of warmth, comfort, safety and solidity. They have historical significance and contemporary cachet.

They are relics of our past, and a growing segment of the new-housing market. Log-home construction is a $3 billion-a-year industry, which has 6.5 percent of the custom-built housing market. “The log-home business has never been stronger than it is now,” says Tom Kupferer, publisher of Home Buyer Publications, which puts out Log Home Living.

Industry figures, loosely cobbled together by Kupferer and the National Association of Home Builders, suggest that about 25,000 log homes are built annually, bringing the total number of log dwellings in the United States close to the half-million mark.

Typical log-home owners, rather than being left-over hippies too poor to construct a geodesic dome, are married, with college degrees and family incomes over $50,000. Imagine them in uniform — police officers, firefighters, military personnel, pilots and nurses — these are the folks that Building System Magazine identifies as the most likely log home-living professionals. Teachers, engineers and truckers are part of the lot, too.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Ted Turner and Jesse Ventura are all self-avowed log-home owners. So are England’s Queen Elizabeth II and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Logs traverse social and geographic boundaries. In Japan, there are log homes over 1,000 years old. The log-building history is even older in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

Americans equate log dwellings with the Pilgrims and early settlements. The style was a logical choice in the timber-rich Northeast.

Today, people choose log homes over more conventional construction for the beauty of the wood and the custom features that make each one unique.

To own one is to spend about 15 percent more than for a house of comparable size built of bricks and mortar. All of that wood adds up. At the outset it may seem that the houses cost the same, but land costs are not figured into the log-home price tag, as they are in the purchase of an existing brick-and-mortar house.

Often the log house is bought as a kit — the Lincoln Logs package, as it were — the logs, windows, doors, roof and such are trucked in to the site, but the foundation, electricity, plumbing, finish carpentry, tile work and painting are supplied by local tradesmen, adding more to the finish cost. The deals are quite fluid. You can buy as much or as little of the contract workas you want. Just be sure you know where all the parts are and who’s paying for what before you begin construction.

Some people can hide a lot of money in log construction.

“People may spend a fortune on the home, but it doesn’t look like they’re flogging their wealth,” says Canadian-based Lloyd Beckedorf of Moose Mountain Log Homes. Someone who wouldn’t feel at home in a $5 million home would feel comfortable in a log home of the same price because the design is down-to-earth, he says.

There are many multimillion-dollar log homes, but the 2,500-square-foot house, costing just shy of $200,000, is the average. At Langford Construction in Burleson, Texas, office manager Connie Stogsdill says costs are $85 to $95 a square foot. That’s about 15 percent more than conventional construction. Quotes of $85-$120 a square foot are not uncommon. Some builders, who deal in deluxe hand-hewn logs of substantial size, have seen the price rise to $200 a square foot, depending on the interior specifications. It seems that when people design their dream house, they tend to indulge in surfaces and fixtures.

The cost of the logs can vary as well. Many of the logs used in log-home building come from Beckedorf’s back yard, Canada. Especially popular is standing dead timber. These highly coveted logs are from trees that died standing, have dried out and are less expensive to truck across the north country, as they are fairly water-free and lighter in weight. Almost twice as many standing dead timber logs can be put on each truck than logs of green wood.

Some logs that end up as Texas homes come from neighboring states and those in the Rocky Mountains. Texas trees “do not measure up to log-home building,” says Glenn Holland, owner of Fort Worth-based Log Home Repair of Texas.

Hollandsays log homes are not maintenance-free, and any homeowner who thinks they are is going to be vastly surprised, and anyone who tries to sell you that feature is lying.

“There is more upkeep on a log home,” he says. “Nature can’t tell the difference between a log lying on the forest floor and one that is part of a wall. You still have to protect the logs from natural elements, sun and rain, bacterial decay and bugs.”

Wrap-around porches help protect the logs, says Stogsdill, who works forDavid Langford, a builder and owner of Real Log Homes. He has done them as small as 700 square feet and as large as 10,000. The large, open concept with living room, dining room and kitchen as one room is quite popular with log-home owners, says Stogsdill. This design style is easy to achieve with log construction, as logs can hold up a roof without the need of interior support pillars and load-bearing walls.

Most log homes have a great room with a loft. “People who buy log homes like the rustic appeal; they want to surround themselves in wood,” says Cresson, Texas-based Christopher Cornwall, North Texas distributor for Kuhns Brothers Log Homes.

Log-home owners are passionate about their dwellings, Kupferer said. A Building Systems Magazine survey showed that 63 percent of log home owners considered no other type of dwelling. Many of those are child-free couples building their last home. “They want to be intimately involved in every detail as it is being built,” he says.

“Campers, we call them,” says James P. Jenkins, owner of Nostalgic Homes of Brenham, Texas. “They have more time to oversee the process,” and they virtually camp out on the job site.

These dedicated people are the tip of the log-homeowner iceberg, says Cornwall.

With each passing year, as boomers edge toward retirement, there will be more and more of them. Right now there are not very many Texas-based log-home builders and dealers, but as the market expands, Cornwall knows more will come. He says the log home is the industry’s best sales tool: “As more people see them, more people will buy them.”

PHOTO

–Knight Ridder Newspapers