Building Our Log Home

Clearing Stumps

We had the excavators come and clear out more of the area where the house will be. We had about 20 stumps still buried around spots in the yard, so they are all now piled up in large piles to be burned or hauled out. There are still a few small trees in the way yet that need to be cuts. We also have to cut all the oak logs piled from clearing the land to get those out of the way. With this area cleared of stumes, over grown raspberry bushes and scrub, we were able to stake out the floor plan and see how far away from larger trees we are.

Big Logs Delivered

We had an Amish sawmill cut the logs for the beams and rafters. Some of the larger ones were taken up the road to a saw mill that could cut some of the 28-30 footers. It took two trucks to bring the load from Dalton to Mauston. One to load both the trucks with a boom and one was a flat bed long enough to hold the big logs. The trucks barely got into the loading area, the driveway winds around some trees and makes it a little tight for backing in large semis, but these guys were pros and managed to unload them. All these logs are either cut on one side or cut with a “V” cut for going under the roof. According to the Amish guys, we will need a crane for these to be put in place. Our next step is to complete the estimates and apply for the building permit.

The Big Logs

One of the challenges we came across was finding large logs for the rafters, beams and posts. I spent part of a winter weekend trekking across the hills of southwestern Wisconsin looking at tornado damaged pine woods. We found a spot about a quarter of a mile into a field. The snow was a couple feet deep and the Amish guys had no trouble trekking up the hill while I tried to keep up. The trees were partially fallen and Ervin (The Montana Log Home Builder) and Jerry thought there was too much taper to the trees. We looked at several other spots but to no avail. I had an idea to email loggers, so I found the Wisconsin Professional Loggers Association  website. I then emailed the entire list and heard back from 4. One of them was a logger in Merrill, about 200 miles away. I emailed him a list of what we needed and within a week we had all the logs cut to size and required widths delivered to an Amish Sawmill in Dalton. These were red pine and some were almost 3 foot in diameter.

Logs Delivered

Well we got our first load of logs! The Amish have been cutting them and bundling them in loads. The timing was not perfect, but we have most of the logs for the house except for rafter logs. We got 6 bundles of 16 all cut and ready to peel. The Amish guys will start peeling soon. We will have 21 bundles coming, and that is for the first floor and part of the second.

The Amish

In the summer of 2006, we had been running errands in town. We had seen some Amish men working on a house, we had stopped and asked if they built homes. The main Amish carpenter Jerry had worked on many homes and gave us a bid on a stick built house. We mulled over many plans over the winter, and then he had shown us a log home he built. It was beautiful, and reasonable, so we pursued new plans using logs. We settled on a plan we purchased from Coolhouseplans.com over 3284 ft.

Welcome

Welcome, this site is the story of building our log home. We left Delafield Wisconsin in the suburbs to the rural wooded area of Mauston, just north of the Wisconsin Dells. In the hills west of Hillsboro lies a treasure trove of craftsman and carpenters in the Amish hills, it is where we begin with our adventure.

Upon purchasing our 11.5 acres we moved our 2100 square foot homes belongings into storage and a small temporary home on the property. Here we had contracted clearing of the land, driveway, well, septic mound, electric, phone and propane all in a ten day period. After getting estimates on several plans from log and stick built companies, we looked for other ways to build our home. I also went to Seattle to take a log building course from loghomebuilders.org, here I learned a little about finding alternative ways of log building and finding resources. Check our progress on our blog and photo galleries.