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Thread: Im new and need advice ...

  1. #11
    LHBA Member rckclmbr428's Avatar
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    Tngal, welcome! I've got a build starting just across the NC border, the number one mistake people make is taking something simple and over complicating it. It's not rocket science!
    www.WileyLogHomes.com
    "Hand Crafted Traditions"

  2. #12
    LHBA Member
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    Absolutely go look at a kit and then go visit a "REAL" log home! Pictures do not do it justice! I have shown family and friends photos and they watch on facebook...then to a tee every person who has come out says EXACTLY the same thing...holy @#$%...and I am talking young, old, religious...folks I have never heard swear! Go look at one if your husband does not "get the bug" then he might not ever.
    Regards,
    Bill

  3. #13
    LHBA Member happyquilter's Avatar
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    Tngal, I'm a bit like you. I immediately "got it," but my more, shall we say cautious, husband was skeptical. In our search for a vacation home we had seen some beautiful hand built forest service cabins so he knew they could be amazing, but he doubted WE could do it. I asked for the class as my combined Christmas/birthday present. He couldn't believe I was that serious. Meantime I kept feeding him little tidbits from this site as I began to realize that this really is possible and could be our answer to affording that unaffordable vacation home in the mountains. My husband is recently retired and our main home is paid off. We do NOT want to take on a mortgage or any debt, so we had just about given up. Well, when it came time for me to make my reservation for the January class, I just said, "You know, you should really come to that class with me. Everyone on the forums says so!" (tee hee) And he surprised the heck out of me by agreeing! (I wasted no time registering us both and booking our flights, lol!) We are now headed to Vegas in 3 weeks to take the class and become part of the "family." Guess what my dear hubby said just this morning? He said, "We should build two cabins and sell one to pay for the other." I cannot wait to take the class and start looking for land. If your husband is cautious like mine was, be sure to let him know that most people build a scale model first, and many people practice by building a smaller building first, like a shed, garage, or guest house. You can also practice your skills by volunteering your labor on other people's homes while you learn more and start collecting the needed tools over time. Knowing all that really helps. Good luck! I hope you do go down this path, and I agree with the others that it should be a joint passion to succeed.

  4. #14
    The best things that could have ever happened to our family growing up was the neighbors not liking the dirt bikes, dogs, or back lawn turned into a pony pasture... These things eventually caused the butterfly to come out of the cocoon and my folks bought 40 acres from a local logging company. I hate to think how I might have turned out had this not happened for me as a young teenager. At 14 my mom would drop me off there alone in the mornings with my chainsaw, a lunch and eventually an old backhoe. Not too long thereafter we had a horse pasture, driveway and house sight cleared. By the time I could legally drive I was often making over $1,000 a week with my own firewood business from that property. Later, on my first day of college, I approached a local contractor working on campus who I was told wasn't hiring. He said he didn't need any more grunt workers but jokingly asked if I could dig a level ditch with his backhoe trying to politely get rid of me. ...Except it didn't work and I was hired on the spot. By 18 I already had hundreds of hours of backhoe experience and I worked my way through college with his construction company. Again, thanks to my folks for getting land in the country.

    I'm a dentist now and make a living pulling rotten teeth out of meth heads. And every single one I meet I see a bit of myself in, and wonder what might have happened to me had I not been kept so busy through those crucial years by that move to the country.

    So I'm really not sure why I wrote all this. I haven't even mentioned a log home once in this rambling. But somehow your situation sounded exactly like my family's almost two decades ago and I thought you should know that your on the right track. Bite off way more then you can chew and your family won't go hungry.

  5. #15
    LHBA Member BoFuller's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Blondie View Post
    Hi,

    We are all just normal people.

    Blondie
    I'm not so sure about that. I'm a member too!
    And there's LHN, and Ed, and .......

  6. #16
    LHBA Member
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    Tngal,
    Your husband being in with you on this is the number one most important part of the entire prospect. No, I've never built before, but I do have a girlfriend and just from smaller disagreements she and I have had, I know that if one of us wants to do something but the other isn't interested, then it won't work.
    Sell it to your husband in a way that he likes!
    If he doesn't like debt, sell it to him by saying these two words: without mortgage. Weigh these options: Pay $15,000 for a $15,000 house that you built yourself and never worry about it again or pay $400,000 for a $180,000 house, that you didn't build, pay on it for thirty years of your life (keeping in mind that American males have an average life expectancy of 75 years), and fix it when something major league important breaks every two to six months. That is the difference between log home builds and turnkeys. I'm petrified scared of debt. It affects me, not just psychologically, but physiologically. Just talking about it causes my blood pressure and heart rate to increase. So, no mortgage for me please. I'd rather live in this crappy 500 square foot one bedroom apartment for the rest of my life than take on a mortgage, but I must own a home, so log it is for me.
    If your husband likes to work with his hands, that's another great way to sell it to him.
    I've always been more of a country kind of guy myself, but my girlfriend's is a little more of a city person. This past summer, she and I took a vacation to Montreal, Canada, where we visited her cousin and his girlfriend. The cousin's girlfriend owns a log home that she and her family built themselves. My girlfriend fell in love with it and started researching log homes as soon as we got back to Detroit. That's how she found LHBA. She read everything there was to read about it and insisted that I go to the November class. I originally didn't want to, but here's how she sold me on it:
    No mortgage
    About 1/10 the price of a traditional home (I would rather call them disposable homes)
    They don't break as often
    If the class is a wash, then at least the wash would only be $800 plus travel and hotel (totaling around $1400), rather than a couple hundred grand being the wash.
    She had one more bargaining chip that pushed me to go. I'm one of those types of people who believes the US economy hasn't got much longer to live and that when the dollar dies, complete chaos will commence, violence and all. My girlfriend, knowing this, very bluntly pointed out to me that logs, which are the largest majority of trees tend to stop or at least slow projectiles better than vinyl, fiberglass insulation, plywood, and drywall. The only reason I mention this is that everyone has their little quirk. This is mine.
    With all these factors, I decided I could stand to risk a $1400 wash. I went to the class. It was not a wash at all!
    My suggestion is to sell the class to your husband by disguising it with whatever quirk he has. If he thinks it's phony baloney right now, he won't when he get's back.
    Best of luck!
    "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
    -- Thomas Jefferson

    Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...#ixzz1dpKn3YO2

  7. #17
    well-said, StrongBow!

  8. #18
    LHBA Member edkemper's Avatar
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    Strongbow,

    When we get right down to this, it is usually the woman that knows what is best for "us" or for "the family." Men usually want more and the biggest of whatever it is we're talking about. Smart women are the one's that lead us in the right direction while we believe, by being out front we are leading. But we usually just haven't noticed the leash we wear.

    I truly believe we are all best when we have a loving partner at our side and when that loving partner can keep us grounded.

    What makes the members "all alike" is our desire for simplicity. But there are also just a few of us that are more simple than others.
    edkemper

    Class: Valentine's Day weekend 2009

    Feel the Bern!

  9. #19
    LHBA Member
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    So true, ed!
    "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
    -- Thomas Jefferson

    Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...#ixzz1dpKn3YO2

  10. #20
    LHBA Member Tom Featherstone's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BoFuller View Post
    I'm not so sure about that. I'm a member too!
    And there's LHN, and Ed, and .......
    Hey! I'm anything but "Normal", just ask my wife. And what is "Normal"? We here are not the majority in this place we all call home.

    Happy New Year!
    Tom

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