Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
can reduce some log walls to rubble. And if some of
the walls have caved in, forget it. Once apart, the logs
will generally be worthless.
I once looked into restoring a cabin near Roanoke,
Virginia, that had been dismantled and left on the
ground for four years. Almost none of the logs was
usable. The beaded, hand-planed joists had been
banded together and had rotted each other. I did not
do that restoration.
Look for houses with wide logs. That means more
heartwood and less chance for rot. The chinking may
be gone or intact, but chances are you'll lose some sap-
wood either way. Pole cabins of less than eight-inch
logs usually aren't worth the effort.
price with first one brother, then the other. Neither
wanted to say, and each referred me to the other.
Finally my friend and I set out to dismantle the cabin,
taking along most of a jug of relatively good home-
made whiskey given to us by some local candidate for
office. (They still did things like that in the early 1960s,
after you got to be known as good old boys.)
You see, one of the brothers liked a nip now and
then, so this was the one we went to see. Well, he
helped with the jug some, and finally allowed that I
could just have the cabin, because he'd probably only
use the logs for fence posts, if that, even. And he
helped us take it apart. True story. I wrote an article
about that cabin for the September 1969 issue of
Ozarks Mountaineer
(a regional magazine), under a
pen name.
If you buy a log house from an absentee owner, get
a letter authorizing you to remove it. Muskrat Murphy
bought his Arkansas cabin (which he planned to move
to Missouri) from a doctor in Michigan, and her let-
ter kept us out of trouble with zealous neighbor folks
who weren't right sure we should be taking it apart.
Don't even fondly imagine you can slip in and whisk
away an abandoned log house undetected. First of all,
it takes a lot longer than you think, and everyone in
the country will know about it. Some students of mine
and I once four-wheeled down a nonroad miles
beyond the reach of most folks to dismantle a one-
room cabin in two hours flat. But in the time we were
there, we encountered an entire horseback riding
club, a hunter, some canoeists, and a farmer on foot.
Buying
Acquiring a log house you've found can be harrowing.
Often the least desirable hulk becomes suddenly
treasured beyond price (almost) when you evidence
interest. Having established a good down-home rela-
tionship with the folks helps. So does the fact, if made
visibly obvious, that your resources are modest (which
is why you want that old cabin, anyway — to save the
cost of a new house). I have acquired log houses free,
just ahead of a developer's bulldozer. I have paid more
than they were worth for desirable specimens. And I
have just plain talked my way into possession.
Perhaps the most involved experience I can relate
was in Searcy County, Arkansas. The cabin I wanted
was just about roofless, but had a wealth of history,
some recorded on century-old tombstones in a nearby
cemetery. Inquiry through a friend who was related to
just about everybody in the county revealed that two
brothers owned this cabin, along with other aban-
doned farmhouses. But these were only two of eight
heirs to the holdings, scattered from there to Califor-
nia. Neither brother would sell without everyone's
permission.
A Fourth of July reunion was scheduled for that
summer, and I got the brothers to ask the others. Mean-
while, the cabin was moldering. No help for it, though.
I was off to college that summer to try and finish an
elusive degree, and heard no more till late August.
Seems when the kinfolks realized which cabin I
wanted, they had all said yes, and so I tried to strike a
Cost
A final word on buying your cabin. It will be quite
expensive to dismantle and transport it to your site. So
unless you buy the land and restore it on the spot,
don't pay much for the house. I was offered a border-
line condition dogtrot log house for $1,600 in 1976,
200 miles from home. All told, I'd have had probably
$25,000 in a barely livable restoration before I was
through. So I said no thank you. If it had been free,
I might have taken it, more to preserve it than as a bar-
gain.
Dismantled, you're talking about nearly 100 logs up
to 20 feet long, in this example, plus perhaps good
