John's First Tree

While normally John and Lisa only cut the limbs and tops out of the trees, on Saturday John got a chance to cut down his first big tree.  We are happy to report that he dropped it right where he wanted it to land and most importantly, he didn't hurt himself or anyone else.

Design & Inspiration

     Over the years of planning for our home when we look at a magazine and we "ohhhh and ahhh...this is the kind of house we like...these are the details that we are looking for" it is very interesting to us that most times those homes were built by one of the 3 same log home companies over and over.  Well since we were not able to purchase a shell we did take the liberty of using some of the details from them as inspiration and incorporate them into our design.  One company in particular was Montana Log Homes.  We really loved the extra little things that they do in their homes and we have borrowed/stolen a few of those ideas to help us make our home more unique than other homes in our area.  There is an old quote “Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.” and that is what Montana Log Homes has done and what we hope to achieve in our home.  So if you are looking to purchase a shell....give them a call, you won't be sorry.

A Visit with the Architect

     During our recent trip to Montana for Log School, we decided to fly out a day early and drive to Idaho and visit with Josh from Design Intelligence.  First let me say that the drive from Bozeman, MT to Rexburg, ID was absolutely gorgeous. Then with that being said, Josh emailed our first draft of the design to us so that we could review them on the flight out.  When we got there he had a set that we 'marked-up' and made the changes on, and he had also printed out a set for us to take with us for further review during our trip.  We were thoroughly impressed with how few changes we had to make to this first draft.  This told us that Josh had truly listened to what we wanted and took our ideas and put them on paper.  We showed these plans to our log home instructor and he said that it will be a challenging project, but we can do it.  We are now waiting on the revised prints, and we are confident that there will be few if any revisions from here.  We were a little apprehensive about choosing an architect from so far away, but there just aren't any in our area; but all of our concerns were put to rest when we saw the work that Josh had done.  While we feel that our design is in good hands and we now know that Josh is on the same page as we are; we are glad that we took the opportunity to schedule the meeting and work with him face-to-face.

Log School

These are some tight fitting notches!

     We had a GREAT time learning how to build our home.  Al Anderson is truly a great teacher and a fount of information about logs.  We had so many questions about the building process and he answered them all and then some.  We were nervous about the scribing, but now that we have had hands on experience...it is a piece of cake. 

Scribing with the Bulls Eye Scribe
 is easy and fun

If you are wanting to purchase the BEST scribe for any type of log building then please follow the link and buy one from Al, you won't regret it, the Bulls Eye Scribe is the best and easiest to use.

 

Lateral cuts make the logs
fit tightly without
chinking.

    

If you are reading this blog because you are wanting to build your own log home, please contact us and we will tell you just how great and valuable these classes are.  Yes these classes are a value!  We spent quite a bit of money to go to Montana (but we made it into a vacation also) but the vast amount of information that we learned in just 5 days will make all of the difference during the construction of our home.  

     

Using a gouge chisel makes
the notches fit perfectly

We also recommend buying the video course from Al, watch it before you go to class and it will help you be ahead of the learning curve and of course we can watch them over again if we run into questions.

**PLEASE note that this video course is designed to accompany the log school, you should not expect to purchase these discs and then be able to build your home.** 

 





Our First Log.

       Bringing home our first log is a wonderful feeling.  It is the realization that we are taking our first major step towards building the house.  Up until now all of our plans and everything have been just a collection of thoughts and notes on paper; this is the first tangible thing that we have done. 

        In a way it is kind of like bringing home your first child...you can't wait to show it off to tell everyone all about it.  So with that being said...Our first log is 46' long and has a butt of 16" and a tip of 12".  As you can see it didn't quite fit on the trailer and we only had about 2 feet of clearance to keep the tip from hitting the road.  Thank goodness we didn't have far to go to bring it home.  It is also fitting to us that this first log came from the yard of our church; this tree is so large that it has been there since my husband was small.  If only this tree could talk, what would it say about all of the wondrous things that have happened at our little church.

       This log will most likely be one of the logs that will be used as the floor supports for the loft.  It has the honor of having the #1 lid/tag attached to the butt end and we will update this post with a picture of it in the house sometime in the future.

      We have many more trees that we are adding to the list, but no tree will be as special as that first tree.