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…

This week we’re working on the interior wall of our log home build and I thought it would be a great time to show you how we pulled this off.

Log homes are not like traditional framed houses in that there is little room for adding outlets, wires and switches (running inside the walls) once the house is built. You can’t just knock out a square of drywall and run wires down 2×4s when your walls are 6 inches of wood.

In the photo below, Eric is using my router (that I used to use in preparation of custom country signs) without the safety guard to create perfectly measured, rectangular cut-outs for the outlets.

At half the depth, here is the first pass of the clothes dryer outlet. Eric will need to make one more pass to make this outlet deep enough to hold the junction box in our main floor laundry room.

Once the hole has been completed, we must also make space for the electrical wire to pass through the log wall and into the basement (where the breaker box will be installed).

The log containing the outlet for our dryer will be on the second log, so we must also measure and drill into the first log laid to ensure the electrical wiring passes through the logs smoothly. I think one of the nicest parts of this entire procedure is that the chance of a fire in our log home as a result of mice running through the walls and chewing on wire are slim to none!

Once the log wall height hit 6′ 5″ as in the photo below I was no longer able to assist in raising and placing them as the next tier.

Thankfully the few areas we had to work on were not utilizing full 16 foot long logs (weighing over 300 pounds).

Most of the work in building our log home over the next few days involved shorter, pre-measured lengths leaving adequate room for the large windows that would later be installed. For this reason we continued building around the home and waited for stronger help to arrive (next weekend) to place the last two courses.

Even the shorter logs can be a challenge though! Measuring twice, cutting once is imperative and likely the reason we had over a full lift of 16 foot logs left over at the end of the build. If you are as cautious, anti-waste, and cost-aware as Eric is when he’s building any structure this may also be your experience. Check with your lumber yard, log home dealer or mill to see if they will credit you for returning the extras.

Freymond Lumber in Bancroft, Ontario, Canada was our supplier and provided delivery of milled logs to our building site. As long as the logs had not been uncovered (not exposed to rain and UV rays) and had remained on the lift (not sitting on the ground and potentially rotting) they were happy to credit our account for a full lift of milled lumber. I cannot say enough positive about Freymond Lumber - they have helped, delivered, provided quotes and estimates, always exercised care and caution when on site, forever friendly, and provided excellent product at an excellent price.

As you know we are not experienced builders of log homes, but Freymond’s treated us with respect and shared many valuable building tips whenever we entered their offices.

Finally, here is a video showing you our progress to date (July 23rd) inside and outside of our custom log home.

Once we’d completed the exterior walls, and as we waited for strong friends to assist in getting the final courses of logs (top rows), Eric and I set to building the interior walls of our home.

Interesting to note that logs not yet exposed to the sun had the bleached pine look, while the other logs, only a week in the sun, were already taking on the orange hue of traditional log homes.

This wall that we’re building over the next few days separates the main floor bath, master bedroom, and linen closets from the dining, living, kitchen area of the home. There will be one standard sized doorway that Eric plans to roughly arch with a chainsaw (and which I will need to sand to beautify).

The first (lower) log laid for the interior wall had to be shaved, chiseled, cut to ensure it would align and be level with the existing exterior walls. Our logs, which rest on the foundation’s sill plate, were a smidge over an inch lower than the sub-floor - not much more than the tongues had to be removed from the bottom of the logs.