Home Is Where the Heart Is

Recently our 9 year old daughter, Gabby, said that of all the places we have lived, this is her favorite home. Understand that for most this would be the least desirable place to live, a 36 year old single wide where our family of seven makes our home now. When asked why, she replied, "It is so cozy and cuddly and I like cozy and cuddly."

Home is not the box you live in, but home is where there is family. Our family works together, laughs together, eats together, prays together, studies together, and yes cuddles together. And did I mention LAUGHS together. Our home is nothing pretty to look at, but it is filled with love. We all agree with Gabby, our home is cozy and we love living here. I hope Gabby will like our 2300 sq. foot lob cabin, too. I think she will because home truly is where the heart is.

All the Lumber is Cut!

Blane and Blane, Jr. finished cutting the last log Monday evening. Yeah! They are now cleaning up the mess. We will have plenty of fire wood for our hot dog roasts.

                                           Here is the good stuff.

We came up short on the timbers and had to order some more from a sawmill.  We didn't order enough logs, but now we know that we can only get 2 and sometimes 3 rafters or floor joist out of one log.

                                         These are some of our 12 ft.,  2 x 4's.

Now the job for Saturday will be to make some more of the solution that we treated the logs with and treat all the lumber.

Then we wait for the logs to be graded so that we know which logs can be used as support logs and which ones will have to be wall logs. After the grading, we can start putting the walls up, then it will start looking like a real house.

                                           Happy Days!

Update

Since my last post we have made a lot of progress on the house.

• First, we finished bleaching and treating all the logs.
• We measured all of the logs and categorized them. 
• We had the foundation backfilled.
• We set our lifting poles that we will use to....Wait for it...lift the logs into place! We need to think of a fancier name other than lifting pole. 
• We passed inspection on our foundation.
•  We began cutting the 4x12s that we are going to use for the rafters and joist for the second floor. 

As soon as we finish cutting the 4x12s we will be ready to have the logs and rafters graded. After that we will be ready to begin stacking logs.

Patience

We have all of the logs peeled now and have started bleaching them, but the work has slowed to an almost stop now. Blane and Blane Jr. are very busy now working at their jobs that pay the bills. We are very thankful that their business has picked up. We want to be stacking logs so bad, but all things in God's timing. There is never enough hours in the day, but I guess it's a good thing because other wise we would work ourselves too much and not get enough rest. Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay without getting angry or upset. ; )

More Logs Peeled

Thanks to Ted and Nathan's help we now have 44 logs peeled. I know what we will be doing Memorial Day! We are having a problem with bugs, so we really need to finish the peeling so we can treat them.

Almost A Third of the Logs Peeled

As of this minute, we have 28 logs peeled. Hopefully by the end of the day we will have a few more done. Blane, Jr. is going to work some on the chicken coop this afternoon. He has not been able to touch it since week before last. It is hard to after more than one project going at the same time.

Blessings

We were blessed on Saturday to have our friends Ted and Nathan come and help peel logs. Thank you so much guys.
We also had a sweet visit from fellow log home builders, Rachel & Keith. They both jumped right in to peel logs. Thank you for the help and for sharing your wisdom. We then enjoyed fellowship around a campfire, roasting hot dogs and making s'mores. They are building a log cabin in Florida and are about 4 months ahead of us, so we were able to glean from them.