We didn’t want to do kitchen countertops at this point, but the kids kept getting hurt while swinging and standing on the pile of oak slabs I’ve had stacked out there drying. After re-arranging the pile a couple times to … Continue reading Kitchen countertops
Much like the exterior doors that I wrote about earlier, stairs say a lot about a home. You can’t just have plywood stairs in a log home – it’s distracting at best. And it looks cheap at worst. We wanted … Continue reading Stairs Part I: Stringers
No, it’s not a typo: I have the second floor (just the floor) installed. Relax, Ivan…. Installing the boards was fairly easy until I reached the back wall, then it got extremely difficult. For one thing, the log is very … Continue reading Another small milestone: Second floor floor installed
The Setup We’ll have three exterior doors. The first one is on the actual back side of the house. We wanted a door with a large window in it so plenty of light can come into the house, and also so we can look out into the backyard. The next one will be on the side of the house in the kitchen. This will be a utility entrance – pull into the carport, drag all the groceries out of the car and use this entrance to bring things into the kitchen. The front door will be the formal entrance. Use … Continue reading First Exterior Door Frame
Background I’m neck deep into using my sawmill. Back in February when it was raining and muddy, I welded up another 18 feet of track for it in the neighbor’s shed. I made dogs to hold the logs in place and squared it up very well. I thought I would be putting the roof on in June of this year. But, I’ve had several delays- the weather being the number one delay, but then my job sent me to Florida for a week of training, and then our LandCruiser needed a new headgasket. Finding, cutting, peeling, and installing the RPSL’s was … Continue reading Cutting Rafters
I cut 6 more trees I measure trees by their diameter (straight across the butt of the log), while Julie measures the circumference (with a tape all the way around the butt of the log). Either way is fine, but since she’s picking the logs, we’re going with her measurement. The idea in the beginning was to stack logs from biggest circumference to smallest circumference. We got started on the second level, and were at a point where the circumference was about to drop below five feet. And then get skinny dramatically. There were still some big ones here and … Continue reading It’s been a weird month
Fixing the Toyota The bottle-neck to moving forward has been fixing my little Toyota pickup. It’s been sitting in the backyard since last June(?) with a dead cylinder in the #6 hole. I thought it was the head gasket (here in this post), but when I took the head off last month, the gasket was perfect. I started looking at the head- and found one of the exhaust valves had a crack in it . I’m very lucky it didn’t break into pieces and ^%$&& up my engine. Very lucky. Need a special tool to install valves, so I ordered … Continue reading Stuck in the mud
We’re going to need a sawmill. Pricing out the cost of lumber for the flooring and the interior of the roof shows me that the lumber alone would cost about $11,000 by itself. If I can get a sawmill for $3-4,000, that saves me about $7,000. Plus, if I get the logs for free or nearly free, it’s quite an investment. Besides, what man out there does not want a sawmill? Even if you don’t know anything about carpentry or woodwork (or, like me, have never even used a sawmill before), having a sawmill just sitting in your garage says, … Continue reading Sawmills
I got bored while looking for land, so I priced out all the materials I could think of that I will need to build this log home. I went to HomeDepot online, and just looked there for everything. I’m sure that I can get stuff cheaper if I keep my eyes open- for example, I saw an ad recently on Craigslist for 3/4″ OSB for $7.00/sheet. The cost is very surprising. Assuming I can get the logs for free (I found a Craigslist ad for a guy that wants someone to come take 50 mature trees out of his yard), … Continue reading Cost analysis
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