Kevin & Missy's
New Log House
Coming Someday to Palouse, Washington
Welcome to our Log Home To
Be!
Kooskia checks out the old model for the new
house.
You are invited to follow along with us as our dream becomes a reality.
Hello Dear Friends!
Well, spring must be here because the mental sap is running...A new design is currently on the drawing board!
More info is available on the Latest News page.
Introduction
Like most things in life, the plan for our house has been subject to change from time to time. Well, it kept on changing and changing until we got to what at least we thought was the final plan.
Then we finally found a General Contractor and got to see the numbers for what that house would cost. Quite a shock, to say the least. To be fair, in going through this contractor's bid with a fine tooth comb this fall we found a number of errors and discrepancies which have us wondering whether this guy really deserves our business or not. The redesign was still very necessary and has yeilded a much improved design so it definately was time well spent.
So, we stepped back and took a month to think things over. Then we started pondering what we could do to change the design to still provide us with our dream house but to get the costs under control. Our original size goal was 2600 square feet. Somehow, the plans had gotten out of hand and we were now 900 square feet over that. At $95 per square foot that was over $85,000!
So, we started looking long and hard at the plan. As it turned out, the size of the entire house was based largely upon the demands of the main floor. So, a few major changes to that floor allowed for moving walls around and dumping over 1000 square feet (or $95,000 if you prefer)! We have also reworked some of our goals for where the house will be when we "finish" it and move in. Hopefully, we can drop a few more bucks off the per square foot cost and get the cost even lower. The goal is to build a strong, healthy "physical plant" and then we can work on upgrading later. So, the redesign process continued on until mid-August when we finally felt like we had a good, sound design that came in at around 2750 square feet. This was still about 150 square feet over our original design goal but shrinking any more was potentially going to cause some serious design issues.
The elevations and floor plans from the last set of plans are here and have been posted. A new model has been built and painted and photographed but we haven't gotten around to getting that roll of film developed (no, we don't have a digital camera...yet). We hope to get that done shortly. The exterior really didn't change much other than shrinking a bit dimensionally. We dropped a door or two and a few windows went away while others were added. The biggest changes inside came about in mid-February with a redesign of Missy's Master Bath and the kitchen. Both redesigns were necessary because the shrunken dimensions started mucking up the flow of things.
So, now it is off to talk to contractors again and visit our buddy Rick at the CU to see about the construction loan. Things are getting mucho exciting!
Stay tuned!
Okay, the question has been asked as to "why a log home?" Well, here is the answer: We had been talking "new house" for over a year but couldn't agree on a style or even a material. Many options were considered including masonry, traditional stick-built with wood, traditional stick-built with steel studs, straw bales (no, I am not kidding) and so on. No consensus of opinion was forthcoming.
Then one day several years ago, our "friendly" cable company cursed us with Home and Garden Television (HGTV), a VERY dangerous channel. Well, one evening as we were surfing the channels we came upon a program about log homes sponsored by a huge dealer from back East, Gastineau Log Homes. The light bulbs went on above both our heads simultaneously and we have been in love (and, more importantly, agreement) with the concept since that time. So off to the bookstores and magazine racks we went to learn more. We didn't realize at the time that America is in the middle of a resurgence in log home building. There are several monthly periodicals dedicated to log home building and more books than a person can afford in terms of time and money to read on the subject.
We have also learned that log home fever is very contagious. Out little project has started at least two other people in our circle of friends down this same path although one appears to have veered off to just timber-framing due to restrictive covenants where they have their land. If any of you get bit, feel free to ask questions. We love to talk log homes and have already made some mistakes that cost us some time and energy (but no money, thankfully). The biggest challenge we had was learning that with log homes you have to learn how to think in somewhat different terms than with conventionally built homes. Looking back now, after almost four years of designing and planning it is hard to even remember why this was a problem...but it was!
We plan to add a reference section to these pages someday listing the various books and periodicals we have consulted. For those lucky enough to live near some select major cities, there are huge log home shows that travel around the country and you might be able to visit those.
To make these pages faster to
load and easier to "surf" we have broken them up into separate sections.
