Log house/or mill log house questions

[bbird]

Okay, if I sound like I don't know what I am talking about....your right! Dh saw a show a few days ago about log houses, although they are not the typical huge logs they use to build the house but milled logs (I think that is the word he used). You can essentially have these built on your property for about $60,000 for a 3,000 sq ft house. Now that is just the shell. No windows, no plumbing, no electric, ect.

Dh now has this crazy idea to do this here. I have to say first though, our dream home has always been a log house, with a river rock fireplace (we dream big!) but were not going to do this until he retires. Because one of his retirement thingies is going bankrupt and we will be getting a lump sum soon, we are thinking about buying a milled log house and either be really really happy living in it and/or when we retire and move make the money back in the price we sell at.

The thing is, the more we talk the more it makes sense because we have all new stuff in the house we are in now. A little back ground...we started with a single wide mobile home, and built all the way around it and turned into into a stickbuilt home increasing the size to 2000 sq ft. We could use the new windows we put in last summer here if the sizes can be matched, which they should be since you design your own home (its not set plans) All our appliances, furnace, counters, cabinets, doorknobs, lights, ect are less then a year old. We could really just use this house to finish that house.

The only thing that would have to be done is electric and plumbing which dh can do and would save tons of money.

Now....when I have mentioned it to my mom she says why would I want to change houses if we just built our house. Good question, but the big thing is $. This house because of leaving the mobile home within the construction is pretty much impossible to finance. When we were selling our place, we were selling the land, with a big cash down to pay for the house. We only have a land payment, since we paid cash as we built the house so there is a big profit to be made if we turned around in a few years and sold the log house.

Does all this make sense? Has anyone seen the log houses that are like this. They are log houses, but the logs are not raw logs...its hard to explain so I hope someone has heard of them.

Supposedly, it takes up to five months of them building it on their site. Like lincoln logs, and then they number all the corner logs and disassemble and truck it to our property where a contractor and his team reassemble it within 2 weeks. (that is just the shell)

[dirty]

i had to google 'milled log homes', because i hadn't heard that term before.

i have seen them. the milled ones 'look', to me, to be a tighter building process and they do look good. although i think i'm just stuck on the look of a regular log home.

now you got me thinking about all these large red pines i have here.

there are a couple of companies around here that do the build and reassemble thing with logs. so i think it's a fairly common thing.

[Deleted]

My brother and I helped his son (my nephew) build a home out of milled logs. While we liked the finished product (and everyone else who saw it did too), we both agreed we'd never build another one. While it has a great look, almost everything about plumbing and wiring is harder. Framing for windows is tougher too. Although we worked to get good tight fits on the logs, it seemed like it would never (could never) be as tight as a 2x6 wall with good insulation.

I think building a real log home as a cabin would be neat, but for a primary residence, I think you can "stick" build a better house for less money. It's also easier to get loans on conventional housing.

That being said, it's your family's dream, and best wishes with whatever you choose to do.

[bbird]

RW- That is the kind of information we are looking for! Thank you!

I think not having the ability to just being able to cut through the logs to put in a plug in, for example, has to have careful planning. We don't have any experience with logs..milled or real, so this would be a challenge to us.

Like you said...everyone likes the look, but its the negatives we need to look at too. Electricity is very high where I live and although we heat by wood, we do have to rely on electric heat at times and I have no idea how a log house retains their heat.

We went over to a log house company about 1/2 hour from us. They do real logs (they are huge in real life, lol) and found it very spendy compared to stick built or even milled. This company was telling us though that they do stick built too, but add logs so the appearance. Like putting log stairs and beams making it less expensive. But boy howdy...were those nice looking homes!

Financing...I had no idea lenders didn't like log homes. I'm pretty clueless about the lending programs. We were already preapproved for a loan when our house was for sale, but talking to the mortgage company about log homes he did tell us it was harder to get financing because there were less lenders willing to loan...not impossible, but he would have to shop the loan around more.

Its probably a good thing that dh and I are dreamers, lol. Sometimes having the dream and talking about the dream is very fun....doing the dream can be a nightmare, lol. :-)