Choosing logs to build a cabin

Decide on whether you want the rugged look for your new retreat

By Dale Mulfinger

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Like a high-maintenance lover, log cabins are not for everyone. But those who love them put up with a little extra maintenance to enjoy the nostalgic beauty. Structural movement, insect infestation, and weathering are all negatives that require attention. Inside, the built-ins will have to be scribed to fit (individually trimmed), and you will need to be precise about where electrical outlets go before the final log assembly.

Log walls can be made with a variety of log profiles from rustic hand-scribed logs, square logs, or milled smooth logs. They can be laid up with insulation and chinking at their joints. Chinking is the white grout you have seen between logs inside and out, but it is utilized only with certain forms of log assembly.

If you find an old log cabin and want to move it, it’s possible to dismantle it, replace rotted logs, and reassemble it wherever you want. In the Midwest, we occasionally find log walls buried inside clapboard-sided homes, and these, too, can be recycled for your new cabin.

Many old log cabins remain charming on the inside yet worn and weathered on the outside, so reusing them might require a new exterior siding. Your guests may be warmly surprised to enter your wood-shingle cabin and find a log cabin inside.

Top image: Saddle-notched round logs overlap at the corners of this log cabin and provide the nostalgic Lincoln Log look that’s become the traditional detail of log cabins in many people’s imagination.

 

Excerpted from Cabinology: A Handbook to Your Private HideawayCopyright ©2008 The Taunton Press

 

 


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