Melissa Can you tell us about your log home? I have dreamed of one for years. My son may actually be the one to build for himself in Idaho. Cindy

-- Cindy Herbek (dh40203@navix.net), October 09, 2001

Answers

Ok, well it is a little different than a normal log cabin, but I will try to explain the best I can. I started to date my husband when I was 15. We decided to build a log cabin when I was 17 and he was 25. So we started checking on prices, but back then (about 1883-84) a kit was around 15 to 20 thousand. Well we didn't expect to have that kind of meoney, so we started checking on logs to cut ourself. Cale knew an old man who had planted a pine grove with thousands of trees about 30 years before this. He decided to sell us as many as we wanted for $5 a tree. We atarted cutting the spring of my Junior year of HS. He would work and I would go to school, then he would pick me up and we would go cut a few trees. In this thick grove they would lodge together and we had to come-a-long them out of the other pines. We did this when we had a chance, throughout the spring and summer. We hauled them to another friends house (an old dairy farmer) who had a broken down saw-mill. We re-built the sawmill for him and spent most of the fall and winter slabbing the logs to a thickness of about 9 inches. We stacked, sticked and covered them with tin on this friends property, and left them sit for 4 years. We were glad to help these people out as well, helping with the milking, barn cleaning and putting up hay. I think this is one reason we have always had such a good marriage, because we spent our dating years working had instead of at the mall, or at a movie. Lots of hard work to cut all of those trees! We ended up cutting about 120 trees, many over 30 feet long. Also we cut most with a hand-saw we picked up at a yard sale for $10, he had an old chain saw tha you had to pull so many times to get started that we finallly figured we could be cutting them faster by hand than with the saw. It was a very old pioneer saw and didn't run very well. Well I have to close now. My turn at the Library tonight. Watch for part 2 of the saga as soon as I get a chance. To BE Continued...

-- Melissa (cmnorris@1st.net), October 09, 2001.

Sorry that is 1983-1984!!! I'm not that old yet. God help me when I am, as forgetful as I am now!!!

-- Melissa (cmnorris@1st.net), October 09, 2001.

PART 2: Hope I'm not boring you all to tears!! Sorry for the typing errors. So we got married, I went to college, we saved every dime we could while renting a big, old, cold farmhouse. If it was ever above 60 we were having a heat wave!! We had one daughter when I was 19, then the next summer we found a 5 acre piece of property that the lady would sell on a land contract for $1000 an acre. We had it surveyed and started making payments.

At this time Cale was making $6 an hour!! I was in college. Got pregnant for daughter number two. we were saving every dime, and in two years we had $6000 saved. Cale dug the foundation and laid the block. However over the winter we made some big changes in our housing plans. Instead of a 2 story, harder to heat house, we went with a one floor ranch style. All of the outside is block, 3/4 underground, but the inside walls are all log. We went with this plan to save on heating, also our taxes are cheaper.

During the spring of 1989 we laid block, had baby #2, and put the roof on with our savings. During the winter, we put in plumbing, and poured the concrete floors as soon as possible in the spring. At this time , he got a raise to $7 an hour.

So in the spring we moved in, no doors and windows yet, electric was 4 plug-ins on a temporary pole. Water from the cistern (all cold!).

So since then we had 2 more kids, and added on to the original. The whole house is 3400 sq.ft./ 14 rooms and is all logs, lumber, slate, stone, and any other rustic thing we could find on the inside. The outside is completley covered with slate, and we will be putting red shingles on in the spring.

The trusses in our Living room are made from old barn beams (40 feet long). We have a big stone fireplace. The living room is cherry lumber and logs, with a locust hard-wood floor. We splurged on all leather furniture, 2 big couches and 2 wing-back reclining chairs. This room also has the entrance way, a small room with a bench and coat hangers, made from bent horse-shoe. It is lined in barn-siding. same barn as trusses (Cale tore this old barn down by himself, took him a whole winter to move it to our place). We also have a small wood door about 3 feet wide and 3 tall, that opens directly into the wood rack. Just bring the wood in the wheelbarrow, open the door and throw into the wood rack. No tracking in the house.

The kitchen has slate countertops (about 40 feet of them!) The bottom cupboards are built out of brick, with cherry doors and the top are built from cherry also. We have a bar with 6 homemade benches (poplar lumber with maple slabs for the seats, the bark is attached to the edges)

The dining room has another long row of cupboards 2o feet long, holding all of the home-canned goods. It also has the wood-burner, our only source of heat. the computer is here as well as a rocker and a recliner by each side of the woodburner. Our dining room table is 10 feet long and 5 feet wide. 2 chairs at each end and long attached benches down the sides. It can hold up to 18 people.

the kids each have a bedroom, built with variously: logs, slate, stone, poplar lumber, old trim from house we tore down. Their closets have homemade curtains. they all have horse pillows, posters and fabric. Love Horses!!! Their bathroom is 3 walls stone (almost divorce causing!! HA HA!!) and 1 logs. Old fashioned big tub and seperate shower.

We have a laundry room/second kitchen. A furnace room with a wood- chuck we don't have hooked up, and a small office for me.

Family room is slate, poplar lumber, and barn siding ceiling. This room has the birds, big library table, book shelves, weight lifting area, sliding glass door to porch.

mASTER BEDROOM, HAS LINEN CLOSET, ROOM-SIZE CLOSETS (10 X10) and (6x8) and a king size bed built from old barn beams, sits high off of the floor. Hope I never fall out!! Our bath is all slate with sumac lumber for cupboards and cedar on the floor. The rest of the house has tile floors. No Carpet except area rug in Family room.

Porch is 50 feet across front of the house and 18 down each side.

Out-buildings include wood/tractor shed 14x40, barn 18x30, chicken house 12x12, outhouse, new barn being built 2ox2o, fruitcellar 8x12. We have bought more property attached to ours for a total of 16 acres.

Well that is about it. It ahs been a lot of work, but it is truly a unique home and we love it here. There is an almost constant flow of people coming to see it, even stopping when they drive by and asking to look!! We live on a dead-end road so that doesn't happen too often!!

I hope you've enjoyed reading this long, long thread. I'm happy to answer any questions.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 09, 2001.

Forgot to mention that all of the handles on cupboards, drawers etc...are horseshoes painted black. Also hooks for towels and coat racks in each room. We saved a lot of money doing this as there are 34 handles in the kitchen alone.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 09, 2001.

Wow Melissa,

All I can say is "can we all come visit sometime?" Really, it sounds wonderful!!

-- Terry - NW Ohio (aunt_tm@hotmail.com), October 09, 2001.

My gosh, you REALLY made yourselves a home to be proud of. Congratulations, you have earned it. It sounds like you really put a lot of thought and care into it.

-- j.r. guerra (jrguerra@boultinghousesimpson.com), October 10, 2001.

Thanks for your kind words!! we have spent literally thousands of hours between logging, cutting lumber and tearing down barns and houses and rescuing old slate. What I love about it the most is that we used so many recycled materials (things that would have ended up in a landfill somehere). Although I come up with a lot of the ideas, most of the credit goes to my husband. He is absolutely the hardest worker, with the most patience I have ever seen!! He will attack any project with enthusuam. He just really loves to work. He built all of our cupboards and almost all of our furniture by hand, with not many fancy tools. He really can do anything with nothing. Most of our footers, leveling for concrete, all fence posts for 5 acres, he dug by hand. A pick and shovel are very at home in his hands!!! When he builds something, he really does it 100% I am very proud of him. You are all welcome to visit, if you are ever in SE Ohio. Stop by!! We always love company and we usually have something good to eat on the stove.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 10, 2001.

I am just in awe...I can only say I've ever met one other couple in my life that come close to your work ethic or abiding faith in yourselves. What I cannot fathom is how at 17 and 25 you could a) meet your soulmate for a lifetime with similar maturity and b)keep going at building like ants.

It is interesting to note that while for much of this time your husband did this amazing building while earnig minimum wage--that had he made far more money--he might not have had the time/freedome/flexibility in schedule to have built an amazing home. Imagine how many highly paid income dollars it would have taken for someone else to have afforded to have that house built?

PS.I love everything about log homes (lived in one) but the room to room acoustics drive me crazy and I couldn't live in one. How do you find that with four children?

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), October 12, 2001.

Hi Ann and thanks! My husband and I actually met when I was 14, and he was 22. We just hit it off so well that there was never a thought but that we would get married, have kids and build some kind of a house that was "different"!!

I believe our work ethic was strongly instilled by our parents. At my house I was always helping my Dad. He was a mechanic, inventor and had his own business with a back-hoe/bull-dozer. I loved to help him figure out how to build things. He could not read very well, but if someone read it to him, he absolutely never forgot it. We spent one whole summer building a windmill from scratch. I read books and then we would go to the shop and tinker around. It worked great and supplied many of our power needs. I also helped him on foundation jobs, sometimes digging ditches by hand if needed. He was always interested in the old ways of doing things. He built an underground home, we made cider, vinegar, canned, cooked on a wood- burning stove. Anything different or out of the ordinary, he liked.

My mom also kept us( 4 kids, 2 girls, twin boys) busy with gardening, canning, and cooking. We did our laundry in a wringer. So my early life was just filled with WORK! But I really never minded it. I also did well in school graduating as valedictorian of my class, and always testing in the top 1-2% of the country on standardized testing. I am not saying this to brag, because it really doesn't matter any more, but to show that these extra activities did not detract from my school-work.

My husbands family was much the same, they had large gardens, orchards, and animals also. His Dad was a mason and took the 4 boys on the jobs with him. My husband has an incredible work ethic!! He is very particular to always do a good job.

I'm sorry if I am a little off topic to those who are following this thread for the log-cabin title.

As to the acoustics, I really don't notice a problem. It is actually not very noisy here. We once had a friends' band set up in our living room for a party, and they loved the acoustics because it didn't echo and they could hear each other better.

The job situation has improved as he is now making $14 an hour, but only works about 20 weeks a year. We have decided to use our brains to figure out how to live on less and less instead of more and more. When I tell people how much we make a year, they are astounded. I do this so they can see that you don't need a $100,000 a year to live well. We live a life-style like many people I know who make $100,000 a year, on a small fraction of this. We have less stress, more time, eat better quality meals, and enjoy our lives immensely more than people caught up in the 2 career, day-care, mortgage ridden rat race of a world. You can do it!!! I would really like to be a help and encouragement to others and I know there are other people here who have done even more than we have with even less. If you are needing help, Just Ask and I'm sure you will get a lot of help!!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 13, 2001.

Melissa: I hope you don't mind but I made a copy of the building of your home and let my son read it and he is anxious to see your house. So in the future could you tell me when would be a good time for them to see it, at your dicretion of course....Bob

-- Bob S (snuffy@1st.net), October 30, 2001.

Hi Bob, you know you are welcome any time!! But probably the weekends would be better because Cale and the kids would be here, and they would love to see you and your son and the kids. Just call me whenever you want to come over.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), October 30, 2001.

Here is the thread about our house.

-- Melissa (me@home.net), January 18, 2002.

I just happened on your letter about you home when I was looking up information for my 19 yar old on log homes. He would love to build a ranch type log home. Is there any way to show your lovely home and family on this page?

-- sally cook (cooky@onecliq.net), January 28, 2002.

I just happened on your letter about you home when I was looking up information for my 19 year old on log homes. He would love to build a ranch type log home. Is there any way to show your lovely home and family on this page?

-- sally cook (cooky@onecliq.net), January 28, 2002.

Sally I have some pictures on-line right now, I can send you a link but I need a valid e-mail, just let me know. Thanks.

-- Melissa in SE Ohio (me@home.net), January 28, 2002.