Facebook is your FRIEND.

We know that many people (Ken included) do not like facebook...too much drama etc.  Well, while you are building a home facebook can be your friend!

This week Lisa was browsing on a local trading site and found someone who was selling this wonderful cement mixer...just what we needed.  It is a great piece of equipment and will help us do the foundation work a lot quicker.

We have also used facebook to sell some of our things that we no longer use.  Lisa keeps an eye out for building materials and other equipment everyday.  Now if someone would just post a hot tub we would be a very happy bunch of Bares. 

The Mill

When you think of a log home, you think of those wonderful round logs, well in truth some of them have to be flat on one side.  The sill logs and the loft floor joists and even the purlins for the roof have to have one side that is flat.

While most people use a special tool attached to their chainsaw to make the flat cuts, we are fortunate enough to be able to have a portable bandsaw mill.  Traditionally our mill can cut up to a 16 foot long log, but to our good fortune we found some extensions and we can now cut up to a 56 foot long log.
This will make cutting the sills, joists and purlins a quick and easy task. (we hope) Also we can now cut long dimension lumber if we need it for the floor or the roof, no scabbing pieces together...yeah!

For those who are curious, this mill is a Timber King B-16.

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.