A few questions...

[bfzzzz]

I have been poking around your site for a day or two now reading everything I can. This seems like a very fun and exciting project to undertake and I am wondering what kind of costs are involved? I see a lot of information about how much you can save by using the methods taught in this seminar but I don't see many people writing about the time and money spent on buying land and building on it. Could anyone give me a general idea of the costs involved or a guess on the time/money spent aquiring the land, materials and building? I know the costs vary greatly between plots of land, size of the cabin and amenities in it, I would just like to have a baseline if anyone is willing to pony up some information ;). I would love to hear from some people who have built their own homes. Thanks in advance!

Bill

[Basil]

http://www.loghomebuilders.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1337

[akemt]

Wow, Basil...that link is great! Heh. I can help with a bit of a comparison to a stick-built, mostly DIY dry-in. Our 600 sq ft addition (I'm in Alaska, mind you, where everything costs more --except logs!) at dry-in stage cost roughly $17,000. I do have the receipts but don't care to go through them all at 11pm. :shock: :wink:

Having someone else do the perimeter foundation (we're newbies in all this; won't do THAT again!): $9,000
Trusses: $1700 + couple hundred freight from WA
Lumber and windows (ordered from South, delivered with trusses): $3,500
Costs of misc. tools, nails, screws, roofing, etc, etc: $3,000 give or take a bit

That's a foundation, walls (2X4), floor framing, subfloor, roof, roofing, windows, 1 door, and house wrap (no siding as we're going to reside the whole place at the same time, replace windows, etc).

We're just now getting ready for the electrical to be done by an electrician friend, then it is on to insulation (estimating about $1200 for the 600 sq ft), drywall (~$1,000), flooring (~$1,400), then on to the remodel costs...

BASIL, do you mind giving us an idea about how long your dry-in took to build? Overall time in weeks/months/(please don't say years :wink: ), whether you did it in one straight shot or evenings weekends, etc.

(We're signed up for the Sept. class and just can't wait for more info...)

[Basil]

Not dried in yet, been working for one year after work and on weekends. I also have been detoured by my wife's request to go ahead and finish the bedroom, which is an additional 800 square feet that is added on to the main structure. I'm also building a wrap-around porch with a dramatic cathedral roof on the gable end of the bedroom, where our outdoor kitchen and bar will be. Jeez, I'll never get done with this behemoth...

At this point I have logs stacked, roof on the main structure, the big gable end roof on the bedroom porch framed, some decking and roof work done on the porches, and I'm just starting to hang rafters on the bedroom.

I can at least see that most of the jobs I dreaded are behind me. I've finished hanging both my ridgepoles, done the roof on the main structure, got all my beams in place, and I'm done stacking logs. Working with dimensional lumber is like spring break now!!

[akemt]

Here's another question for you, Basil (or anyone else for that matter):

Other than the obvious pain of working in the rain, does raining while building pose any specific problems to a log home? I mean, in the sense of warping, rotting, etc like with a stick-built. Do log homes generally fair better in that respect than stick-built?

We were flat out lucky it only rained once durring the week we were putting up our dry-in for the addition, if a log home takes more than 24 hours to put up (ha ha ha, I know), chances are we'll have to deal with it raining on us durring construction.

[hawkiye]

Actually with this method of building and particularly how the logs are peeled there is no comparison to demensional lumber the rain should not hurt them. Obviously if you took ten years to build and they were left out in the rain every season it would have an effect but a season should be no problem. Some folks have had them exposed in snow and or rain for several seasons and they were fine however they needed to be cleaned and sometimes sanded to get the fresh log look again. And some folks even prefer the weathered log look.

Blayne

[Basil]

Since I don't have my porches built yet, some of my logs are still getting exposed. they were cut in december of 04 and february of 05. Keep a close eye on fungus. FYI this is yellow poplar, so I don't know how well softwoods would hold up. I had no roof over any of the structure for about 6 months, and the logs were exposed before I started building too.