Friends Help Build A Log Home

As I shared in the last post, the logs for our home average 300 pounds or more. Lifting and carrying them wasn’t too much a problem for my female, 6′ frame, but when we needed to start raising them over my head, I lost steam. I just didn’t have the power.

Here was something I just could not do, no matter how much I desired it. Humility has a way of teaching us a lesson more extreme than we’d hoped, and it wasn’t long before I had to admit my short-comings to friends - and ask for help.

To the rescue came two friends from Bancroft - Chuck Bailey and his soon-to-be-bride Summer - and two friends from Kitchener - Brian Wannamaker and Danielle Greaves (originally from Boulter and Paudash, respectively.

Danielle is one of the finest, sweetest women you’d ever want to be in the presence of. She’s beautiful, poised, intelligent and ready to roll up her sleeves. I shot this photo of her in a contemplative moment, but Danielle wasn’t sitting still for long, she chiseled out the remaining corners of the tongue-and-groove logs for the top two rows.

Summer Plaxton had her wedding day coming up in just two weeks. We were all worried she’d fall down the ramp and break a leg, cut herself and need stitches on the steel that bound the logs, etc. She escaped the log home building project without a scrape - resigning herself to helping me collect and truck 4 loads of garbage to the dump while the men did the heavy lifting.

Brian, Chuck and Eric worked diligently measuring, cutting, and laying the top rows of logs up. The very top row has to be flat (no tongue and groove) and the skill saw took most of the tongues off, with Brian cleaning up any excess.

Taking A Break

After a few hours of everyone working in the hot sun, we all took a break and enjoyed a home made pizza from the Carriere’s Old Homestead in Boulter. Renata made us two large pizzas to die for and between the six of us we devoured every bite.

Here’s Eric perched in a window and enjoying every bite. It never ceases to amaze me how a 6′5″ man can fold up so small nor eat so much in such a short period of time!

Brian bit into a hot pepper here (sitting next to Charles) I think…