I really enjoy this forum..very informative. My question is for anyone who might have built a log home from a kit that you see advertised in various magazines. Are these log homes easy to build, energy efficient, and cheap to build? Also, is it more economic to build a two-story floor plan versus a one-story floor plan assuming the same square footage? Thank you all.

-- doyle haynes (snoogy613@aol.com), March 18, 2001

Answers

Doyle, we built a log home from a kit 3 years ago. Putting them together is heavy work, but not hard. All the logs are numbered so if you can follow a plan it's easy. You do need to have some knowledge of what you are doing though, I suggest you plan, plan and then plan some more.We researched and read for about a year before we committed to build ourselves.The web has numerous good sites and there are loads of books to help.Think VERY carefully before you commit. We built ours while living in an RV on our land and both of us had full time jobs and kids also, so time spent on building was between jobs etc.We also did our own electric and plumbing and finishing, infact, we did everything ourselves. It is not a cheap way to build, log homes are about as expensive as a regular house (unless you have youe own trees on your land). It is always cheaper to build up rather than out and log homes are no different. Your home will only be warm if you build it right, whether it's log or stick built. Please do lots of research,you will be more informed and have a better house. We don't regret building our log home ourselves, it was a great experience, took longer than we thought, we saved a huge amount of money,but best of all we have no mortgage. We saved long and hard and paid as we went, and we have a home that's ours.

Good luck to you Carol

-- Carol Koller (ckoller@netsync.net), March 18, 2001.

We live in a log house, also and love it. Our approach was a little different. For us, log home kits were a little pricey, so we checked out our local lumber company. They were offering precut house logs of various lengths at a discount price. We drew up our own house plans, figured up what we needed for logs and built it ourselves! This house is a 24x40 two story gambrel and my husband, my father-in-law and myself put the complete shell up in 2 weeks. That was 10 yrs. ago, and we're just finishing the upstairs....but no mortgage either. I think you'll be very happy with a log house!! Best thing about them is you don't have to hunt for a wall stud to hang a picture, just put a nail anywhere! Good luck.

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), March 18, 2001.

log homes aregreat thats for sure!! Ours is serving us well. I hired a local lumber contractore to cut our logs and he helped us get started on building the house then we finished it. I have an uncle who built his own log home from pople trees and stood them up and down. Chinked the cracks with somethng (I don't know what. We figured the logs would twist when they dried but they didn't!! Good looking home he built. Some times you just haveto think out side the box.

-- michelle (tsjheath@ainop.com), March 19, 2001.