The Log Package

There are many different log home kits or products available to choose from, and I'm not going to recommend which kind you should choose. I can only tell you about what we chose and some of the pros and cons that went along with that choice. As I've mentioned before, my husband likes things to be plumb and square. A lot of log builders would laugh at this, but it's not an impossible goal, and it makes so many steps down the road easier. So with that in mind, we definitely weren't going to go for the rustic natural log style. We wanted logs that would be rounded on the outside for the log home look, but flat on the inside for ease of attaching interior walls, hanging pictures, etc. One thing I'll say up front is that if you don't care about the thermal value of a log home and simply like the log home look, it would be a lot easier to frame the home and apply log siding, both inside and out if you'd like.

In searching for a log home product, we found a company that produced laminated logs. Basically, they are constructed by having five 2x10's laminated together (or 4 laminations in the case of the garage logs), kiln dried, and later planed into the shape of a log with a tongue and groove interlocking system. Although, the system wasn't without flaws, I don't think we would ever choose any other type of log than the laminated logs. For one, it minimized shrinkage. I believe in a typical log home you need to allow for roughly 3” of shrinkage in an 8' wall, leading to all sorts of complications with installing windows, hanging cabinets, and adding stairways or 2nd levels. I don't think our laminated logs shrunk more than 1/16” a piece, which comes to about 0.8” for the whole wall. This made installing windows and cabinets very easy.

Our package did not come as a kit. We submitted our house plan to the distributer who calculated linear feet of logs that we would need, which we cut to fit as needed. They didn't subtract for windows, so there would a be little extra in case it was needed, and it certainly was. There were a few surprises along the way, many of which may have been avoided if we had inspected the material at the mill before it was ever shipped. One surprise was that we had done our calculations expecting 7.5” tall logs and received logs that were 7.25” tall (before shrinking). That put the ceiling height at a little less than 8'. This turned out not to be as bad as we expected, since we have a gabled ceiling over the great room and a loft sitting on beams over the bedrooms/bath, so it is really only the beams that are under 8' high. Another surprise was that the house logs we were shipped came out to be about 100' short of what we paid for. Unfortunately, I didn't take inventory until some time after we began the project, so I had no way to prove it, but the linear feet of garage logs were right on the mark, so I think my measurements were accurate.

Besides sizing, one of the first problems we discovered with the logs is that they had not been kept level when coming out of the planer, so the tongues and grooves deviated at the end of all the logs, making it so all manner of pushing, pulling, pounding, and clamping couldn't make the grooves on the upper log lock into the tongues on the lower log. Rather than log wrestling, we found it much better to cut the last 6-8” off the end of every log. This created a lot of waste material, but made log stacking a lot easier. Later, after we began stacking logs, we found that by the time you got over 4-5 logs high, the walls would consistently be out of level. My husband finally figured out that nearly all of the logs were just slightly taller along the front lip than on the back. On a single log, this is barely perceptible, but the error accumulates with every row, and by the time you stack up a whole wall, there's a huge gap between the wall and the level. This resulted in tearing down walls after they were part way up, and running a router along the front lip of almost every log until they stacked up level, probably adding a good month's worth of work to the project.

Between the initial material shortage and subsequent wastage of cutting off log ends, we had to order some additional material. We were asked to cut off a sample and mail it to the company, so they could match it. Unfortunately the small piece shrunk significantly, and the new material was smaller than the rest adding one more challenge to the project. It would have been better to draw a pattern or make it out of cardboard that wouldn't shrink. The good news is that we had decided to frame the gable ends, so we only had to keep the logs straight for 13 logs high instead of going up another 20 rows to the peak of the gable. As I mentioned, we liked the results we got with using laminated logs, but we recommend clearly communicating your expectations to the log company at the outset, and inspecting the material on-site before the expense of shipping has been made, to make sure you are getting what you ordered and paid for. We don't think it's unreasonable to expect the logs to be held level as they come off the planer or to set the planer blades so the upper log surface is level. We just didn't know that wouldn't be standard practice, and we should have made a special request up front. Communicating expectations is one important lesson we have learned on our journey.