Well so far we haven't done very many tough things. However; one of the toughest things you will do is to agree on a floor plan! We both had things that we wanted in the house, things that were important to us, it was just a matter of making it all fit and then making sure that it fit onto our property. It seemed like every time we almost had it we were either going to end up over top of the septic tank; that is not where you want to be if there is a problem. Or we were too close under some large trees that we want to keep, but we don't want to be right underneath in case a limb falls off. At long last we have a floor plan that we can agree on, that fits our site and is easy to work with.
Make sure that when you are designing your home that you can get logs that fit your plan; for example if you have one wall that is 60ft. long and the longest log you can get is only 40ft...then you need to rethink your plan. Also remember that your 60ft long log will weigh about 1.5 tons when it is green, can you handle a log that big? We overcame that by adding in extra corners, yes that means we have more notches to make but it keeps our logs shorter and easier to manage; and it helps to give our home a unique look. One of our biggest goals while developing the floor plan was to make sure that our home didn't resemble any other home in the area but yet it needs to look like it fits the surroundings and that it totally fits our lifestyle. When drawing your floor plan ask yourself what are the important rooms in your home and start with those rooms and then add others in around them. For us the Kitchen and the Great Room were the most important. We have a large family and when we all get together we can sometimes feel cramped, we wanted to design the house so that there was plenty of room in the kitchen to prepare a big meal and plenty of counter space so that we could set everything up buffet style; and plenty of room to kick back and relax after we have stuffed ourselves.
Now that we have this GREAT floor plan we have to find someone with a bit more knowledge about log structures to tweak the design and create a set of blue prints for us. That is one of the on-going projects at the moment. We have emailed our plan to several log home architects...and I stress to you make sure that they have done a log structure before, log homes are different from standard homes and many dimensions are different. We received quotes from everyone that we emailed and they ranged from .85 per sq.ft to 7.00 per sq.ft; you can expect outdoor living areas to cost less for designing that indoor spaces. Don't be afraid to ask your designer for pictures of homes they have designed, samples of what drawings and prints they will be providing to you, references and so on. One key thing to also remember is that you need to contact your local planning agency and find out about permits and building requirements. We are fortunate not to have any such restrictions in our area, but many people do.
Trust your gut! When interviewing anyone who is helping you with your home, if they seem to hesitate or delay or side skirt a question, then take that as your first warning that something may be wrong. A good example of this is early in our search for an architect we spoke with a man who spent 30 minutes trying to tell us all of the ways that we would fail at this endeavor, and he kept making snide comments about other drafting companies and more...We finally told him that we just didn't think he was the right person for the job; it was simple he DIDN'T BELIEVE in us or what we are doing and we didn't like his personality, we don't want to work with someone who is not on board with this project and who is telling us that it will fail before he even got to know us. So we have narrowed our list down to 2 different people and we are gathering more information about them, including ratings from the better business bureau and anything else we can find online. *Remember...the biggest or most well known is NOT always the best..and stay in budget*
Always have a back-up person or company in mind for every aspect of your project.
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