Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Finding Your Restoration Project
Finding a restorable log house is first. Then buying it
or, less likely today, getting it for the act of removal and
cleaning up the site. Then there's dismantling, pulling
lots of nails and removing the inevitable additions of
years, then transportation. Then you're about ready to
begin at square one.
You'd be surprised at how many ways you can find
a log house. In the mid-South, there are adventurous
souls who find, dismantle, and advertise log houses
in newspapers, in magazines, and, of course, on the
Internet. A number of professionals are listed, at this
writing. Start with a search for “log cabins” and you'll
be surprised at what you'll find.
Often if you buy the house through your restoration
contractor, you will be better served. The contractor
will offer a warranty on the house purchased, and will
pay greater attention to detail and to satisfying you,
the client. The long-distance supplier of the log house
will find it difficult to respond to many problems,
while your contractor will be working with you every
day. The supplier will probably offer to replace de-
cayed material, but my experience has been that I have
a better chance of getting the supplier to make good
on the logs and other materials than the individual
clients have. First, I know what is good and what is
not; and second, the supplier knows it and knows that
I will not accept poor-quality materials. So when you
pay the contractor, you are paying for a guarantee of
the right material and the best-quality material.
Of course, there are other ways to find a log house.
Country newspapers are a source. On a slow day, the
editor of a weekly will often run a feature on some-
body's grandfather's house; maybe it's for sale. Or a
farmer might advertise logs for sale. Or you might run
an ad yourself seeking logs or log houses. You might
even have a log house in your family without realizing
it. Ask around. Keeping the house in the family might
appeal to that aging uncle who was using it to store hay.
Locate your house by asking, driving around, or
tracking down newspaper photographs. I will say that
cabin hunting cannot be a used-car-lot pursuit. It
takes time, and you should never roar up to a back-
woodsman in your shiny vehicle and grill him impa-
tiently about log houses or anything else.
This West Virginia log house shows the condition of many cabins you
will find. This cabin had not been lived in for many years, yet had logs
and other materials in excellent condition.
Wide logs such as those in this house from near White Sulphur Springs,
West Virginia, mean less chinking and a more efficient restoration.
This restored house is near Earlysville, Virginia.
My friend Bill Cameron, then almost 80 (and for
whom my brother and I helped restore Turnback
Mill near Halltown, Missouri), was the finest hand
at discovering antiques I've known. Be it old millstones,
log houses, lost cemeteries, or sorghum mills, I seldom
knew him to fail. It went like this — we approached a
farmhouse or country store in the requisite battered
