Building a Log Home, chapter 1

I’ve been meaning to write a “story of Big Pine Lodge” ever since we moved in, but life has gone in other directions. We have two photo albums that chronicle the steps involved so I’ll be blogging the journey here, even if I am a tad tardy in doing so.

The Beginning – my husband and I had the same dream of building a full log home. Every facet of that dream, from floor plan to fixtures to colors, we agreed on, thanks to nearly ten years of collecting pictures from log home magazines. We bought 72 acres of bright, wooded, and rolling land that had a bowl-shaped, south-facing high spot perfect for our dream house. We built a three-car garage to the west with a two bedroom apartment above and used it as a weekend and summer get-away for several years until we were ready to build “the lodge”.

The Floor Plan – I used graph paper first and later a computer program to figure out how to incorporate our list of must-haves.

The Must-Haves: Full logs, no drywall anywhere, a stone fireplace, a large great room, a loft, a kitchen you could look down on, high ceilings and lots of windows, a sunroom, and a deck. From sketch to print-out to 3-D model we changed multiple things, but the basic layout stayed the same.
(If you're not already an e-mail subscriber you might want to sign up so you don't miss any "chapters" in the progress of building this dream home. I'll have pictures of every step.)