Thoughts on Building a Log Home

At Cascade Handcrafted, we have years of log home building experience. Here are a few thoughts from the experts on significant steps in the journey to creating your log dream home:

1. Log homes - hand built uniqueness vs. machined uniformity

What do you want? Think of shopping for a home as shopping for a car - do you want a Lada or a Lamborghini? Both serve a purpose, but one has the edge aesthetically and functionally.

Cascade builds a full scribe or post and beam style of natural hand-peeled log building. Real, handcrafted logs are the Lamborghini of the log building choices. No two logs are the same, making your home an original work of art.

Why run logs through a machine and take away all of their uniqueness and beauty?

2. Choose a designer with log home design experience.

Preferably choose one who has some log home building experience himself. People with log experience know more about what to do and not to do with logs.

Cascade often works closely with an excellent designer who we do not hesitate to recommend.

3. Choose your builder carefully.

Do you want your home to be a factory run product or an original, proudly crafted by a small business who depends upon satisfied customers rather than a large advertising budget?

4. Cascade creates custom hand built log buildings.

It is important to distinguish hand-crafted from machine cut processes.

Hand-crafted buildings feature the natural beauty and character of logs that are hand peeled by draw knife - the same tool and muscle that has gone into creating the log house feel for a thousand years. The process continues with the hand-scribing and cutting of each piece until the entire house has been built. The log shell has been entirely pre-built and erected before delivery to it's final destination. Most machined products have been cut from a list and never assembled.

5. Handcrafted means that the whole tree is utilized with little waste.

Most people prefer to keep as much of the original character of the log as possible - from the flaring butt near the roots to small branches and tree tops for rail and spindle detail.

6. Log homes are enduring.

The real log possesses the beauty nature gave it. It is very difficult to make a real log conform to trendiness or pop culture hype. This quality of physical and spiritual refuge is what most log home enthusiasts appreciate about the hand built log building. With good design and proper maintenance the well built log home will serve for centuries.