Montana. The word evoked the old west for me. Winchesters, Colts, Buffalo, Antelope, vast hills and plains, mountain streams full of trout. When a client with a small ranch of 1500 acres (yes, the neighbour’s was rumoured to be 50,000 acres) called me for a design for a ranch near Big Timber, I couldn’t wait [...]
Chinking is the stuff you put between the logs to keep the weather out. That’s why we like to build an insulated sandwich in the spaces to insure against a Canadian winter barging uninvited into our livingroom and making itself at home. The ideal space to work with is about three inches of height by [...]
For fifty years so far, I have loved old log houses, particularly the hand-hewn square-timbered ones that I find superior to all other styles. I love restoring these log houses for families who also appreciated them. And I’ll go anywhere to find a vintage log house. They seemed easy to find back in the 60s [...]
Sometimes in our business we run into creatures big and small. One or another of them seemed to think these old abandoned houses would make a lovely home and why not? They weren’t being used were they? We’d often start with the dirty business of cleaning up after them since their natural tendencies precluded our [...]
Some log house enthusiasts think we can move the whole house in one piece. You can’t. Well, most of the time you can’t for lots of reasons…reasons why we disassemble them a log at a time, numbering each one and noting its placement on our rebuild plan. I know it sounds laborious and it is. [...]
I’d just finished building one of our log homes near Cascades Quebec and came to admire the early buildings there, particularly the ones with the curved overhangs over their porches. Inevitably, I found one to bring back to Ontario. It was large, being 35 ft. by 28 ft. with the customary piece-sur-piece method of cornering [...]
My bride and I were on the way to Hawaii on our honeymoon, comfortably (well, not quite comfortably, I was 6’ 4” then and legroom was in short supply) ensconced in our seats. I couldn’t help but notice the guy beside me was reading one of those articles from a magazine inserted in the pocket [...]
I was called out to inspect a log house in the country near a hamlet called Canton. No, we were not in China …closer than that. It wasn’t quite a log house. It was half of a log house. A huge old maple had crashed through it during a recent storm. It certainly was a [...]
Someone advised me to see an elderly lady in the hospital in Lindsey, I forget just who now. All I was told was that she was very interested in history and antiques and wanted to share something with me. I did go to see her and I’m glad I did. She was supposedly gravely ill [...]
The phone was ringing. But it was the middle of the night. Must be an emergency. I rolled out of bed to answer it. It was someone in an agitated state for sure. When he right away asked me what my log buildings cost I figured him for a nutcase. I told him anyway. I [...]