I have visited, and explored, hundreds of old barns over the years.

I really have… hundreds of them.

And, I have loved them all.

There is nothing else quite like an old barn.

They are magical places. Full of sights and sounds, and yes, smells, that you simply won’t find anywhere else. Maybe it’s just me, or the fact that I have so many fond memories of exploring my grandparent’s barn as a child. I just feel more “connected” when a barn is near.

If you haven’t been in an old barn in a while (or heaven forbid, you have never been in one)… make it a priority to go visit one. You won’t regret it.

It is sad that these antique structures are disappearing so fast from our landscapes. They just aren’t needed like they used to be… the large round bales of hay, which are so common today, turned out to be the swan song of these relics.

I watched a tv show the other night where a young man called a barn a “cow house”. I guess we are heading into a future where even the word “barn” will only garner confused looks.

I have restored a few barns over the years… a couple of them now serve as locations for wedding receptions, another one offers square dance opportunities, and yet another serves as a museum for a modern art collection. Not a single one provides a roof over the head of a cow though.

I have also rebuilt quite a few old barns as homes or cabins for clients…some of them were timber frame, some were log… they do make mighty fine homes… no doubt about it.

But only once did I salvage a barn and have the privilege of putting it back up as a barn. It was incredible. I had a great time. I learned a few things too.

I look forward to sharing it all with you this coming week.

So, let’s build a barn!

Originally posted 2015-03-15 15:13:02.

“I want a log cabin…

with a porch of course…

but mainly I want a huge cooking fireplace…

and I mean HUGE…

just like the ones found in kitchens that were located out back of colonial homes…

you know…

the ones you could almost get inside of and do your cooking.”

Originally posted 2015-03-14 18:41:58.

Years ago I received a call from someone who told me that they had an old farmhouse that had been the victim of a fire and he asked me if I’d be interested in salvaging the home.

The caller said that part of the home was an old log cabin.

He had my interest.

I made my usual mistake of asking some follow up questions… how old was the cabin? what species of wood was it made out of?

No one ever seems to know these answers… but almost everyone will respond with… “I heard it was built in the 1700’s… out of chestnut”. (For the record… I’ve never seen a log cabin from the 1700’s built out of chestnut, and I doubt if there is one)

The reason I ask for more information when someone calls is that 9 out of 10 times that I go look at a old building it turns out to be a wasted trip. As much as I love a good road trip, I’d rather spend my time building… or just hanging out with my family.

Driving to the other side of the state to look at a house or a barn can easily take my entire day.

I heard long ago that every successful door-to-door salesman rejoices with every rejection knowing that it’s all about the odds and that with each failure he is getting a little closer to that eventual prize. And, that is the attitude that I adopted with my adventures.

Even if the building I’m going to see doesn’t work out, I try my best to enjoy meeting this new person that is put in front of me, and savoring this new part of the state that I get to visit. I have seen more of the back roads of the old dominion than most, from the cotton fields of the southeast to the stone walls of the northwest… I do love Virginia… and the people that live here.

The first impression of this house (other than the charring visible outside of a second story window) was that she appeared to be a house out of 1920’s… “John Boy’s era”… “the greatest generation”… but certainly not the greatest period of Virginia architecture.

She was… a plain Jane.

A journey around to the side of the house was a real treat though. The property’s owner had pulled away some of the siding to reveal a breathtakingly beautiful log cabin. Large logs, with full-dovetail notches, all heartpine. OMG

Heartpine log cabins are the most attractive cabins that you will ever see, but they are very rare. Most weren’t cared for and either rotted away or the bugs ate them up.

Full dovetail notching is also very rare. Mostly found in books and not in real life practice. They are overly complicated to produce and their very nature, of bringing moisture into a joint and causing it to rot out, kept most people from using them in the building of their home.

I wanted this cabin.

Until I walked inside.

The cabin only comprised one end of the entire home, clearly built during a much earlier period. This section of the home was where the fire had raged. The entire cabin’s interior had been charred… not just blackened… but burned away.

The only salvage value here would be to take the logs to a sawmill and see what lumber could be obtained by slicing her up. I didn’t have the heart for that. So, I gave the fellow a couple phone numbers of people that do that type of salvaging and walked away with these three photos and the lost dream of what could have been one mighty fine cabin.

Originally posted 2015-03-14 17:02:43.

The greatest joy in my life has been my three children.

When you are known as “the log cabin man” and it’s time to build your children a play house, what else do you build them other than a log cabin?

I’ve lost track of the number of times that I have moved this little cabin… but she still stands proud today, visible from my office chair. Her little logs are over two hundred years old. She has a copper roof to keep her dry and a stone foundation to hold her up.

It’s been a long time since any of my children have been able to fit inside, but I now have four grandchildren (so far) who one day will discover this magic little place.

Originally posted 2015-03-13 15:39:00.

I did not build this log cabin. Yet, I was called in to design and build an addition for it. I wondered why.

The cabin had been built “by a nationally recognized expert on log cabins”. Why wasn’t he being called in to add an addition?

The cabin did have some things going for it… nice old logs, not a bad chimney, appealing roof pitches, and a porch located on the side of the house where one could enjoy the views.

There were a couple of things though that jumped out at me that I would have done differently, but I didn’t comment on them to the owner. For one thing I’ve never been a big fan of square windows… I like windows that are taller than they are wide.

Also, I don’t care for board-and-batten siding on a log cabin. In all my years of looking at historic cabins… hundreds and hundreds of them… I have never seen a single one that originally had board-and-batten siding on it. None, at all.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like board-and-batten, just not on, or near, a log cabin… they tend to give a cabin an “outbuilding feel”… If you want your cabin to take on a chicken-coop look, go with board-and-batten. If not use horizontal siding.

I asked the cabin’s owners about their relationship with their previous builder and if they were pleased his workmanship. The long list of problems they began describing was unbelievable, starting with their discovery that the builder had not installed footers under the foundation and that they were forced to hire someone else to jack the house up and build a new proper foundation under it.

hmmmmm. So, his building skills needed improvement but what about his design work?
I’ll let you judge… in Part 3.

Originally posted 2015-03-09 21:21:01.

Here we have the three stages of the restoration of this antique log cabin…

The first image is of the cabin as it was first seen by me. She was covered in snow and showed the effects of having been abandoned for decades.

The second photo shows the cabin right after we have just finished the restoration work and have done our final sweeping.

Originally posted 2015-03-06 20:22:05.

I think that the little lean-to kitchen addition turned out well. I’ve always been a fan of this style of addition onto a cabin. It’s commonly found, and aesthetically pleasing.

This added space is very handy to have on any cabin.

We built stone piers underneath it just like the original cabin has under her. Well… I guess ours are more “refined” and we did cheat some… we put footers under ours, and, there is cement hidden within the stonework. If this cabin comes down one day during an earthquake it will not be because of our addition. 🙂

This lean-to is sided with cedar which should hold up well for a long time with little needed maintenance, if any.

This type of addition… framed with siding, I find is very attractive. I think framed additions (or stone additions) add to the beauty of a cabin and save money. It’s one of the many reasons that log cabin kits fail so miserably.

Future log cabin owners are always presented with log cabin plans that feature nothing but logs, after all it’s what these manufacturers process and sell. “If it’s not all log, then it’s not a log home”.

But, that is not what was done for generations.

I have found that if I stick to proven historic aesthetics that I am always rewarded in the end.

Originally posted 2015-03-06 17:52:36.

As you can see in this photo, we had come far in the restoration of this fine little cabin. The logs are now chinked, the porch has been rebuilt, the chimney has been rescued, and we were ready for the roofing crew to come in and apply the copper.

I find this to be a very pleasing photo of the cabin… it is a sweet spot to stand and take in all of her beauty. If I were building her new, rather than restoring her, this is perspective I’d like to see as I approached home.

The cabin’s roof line… the way that the porch roof and the house roof are connected… is a rarity when compared with all the other cabins I have encountered over so many years. Typically, the two roofs are separate, making the porch roof more shallowly pitched.

Originally posted 2015-03-04 16:25:21.

We always give an old log cabin a good cleaning with a power washer and soapy water after we have removed all the unwanted parts of the structure. It is amazing how much dirt and grime gathers inside of an old home over the course of a century or two. (That’s one of a variety of reasons that I personally prefer living in a new re-built old home over living in an existing old home… I am fully aware of what is behind the walls).

Originally posted 2015-03-04 15:23:56.

Chinking… filling in the area between the logs is probably the single most important aspect of building or restoring a log cabin. It’s also the least appreciated.

Done correctly it will last for decades, it will keep out the rain and the cold, it will protect the logs from water damage, and it can be an attractive feature.

It is also the most numerous request that we get for our services, and a lot of those calls are because most novices do not install it correctly and as a result problems (mainly rot) appear very soon.

This is an area of log construction that “do it right the first time” is very important. Many log homeowners will pay to have it done wrong, then they will pay more than that to have it removed, then they will pay to have repairs done to their logs because of the improper chinking, then they will pay to have it done right. Yikes.

We use a dyed cement mix. It cost about $5 for a five gallon bucket full of it. We do not use PermaChink which cost over $100 a bucket… We don’t like working with a polymer, nor do we like cleaning up after we are finished at the end of the day with toxic chemicals, nor do we feel it is appropriate to apply a modern plastic product to a vintage log cabin. It’s just not the right way to do things.

We like our Frisbees made out plastic, not our historic structures. Yes, I know PermaChink is warranted to last a long time… but how many plastic products do you know that hold up well out in the sun? How many times has a warranty worked out for you?

I’ve been chinking cabins for 30 years… and every cabin I’ve ever chinked is still just as fine today as the day I installed it… not one single chink joint replaced… ever.

Chinking for the most part is a miserable job. It’s painstakingly slow, and the installer is prone to getting painful cuts (I carried one crewman to the hospital to get stitches in his belly from a piece of the wire mesh that he was working with). Even my dentist can tell when I’ve been chinking from the grinding damage to my teeth that I mindlessly do while installing.

I’ll have to see if I can put together some kind of YouTube video and show people how to install chinking properly. My dentist would be happy about that.

Originally posted 2015-03-04 14:27:55.