Articles

The following are a few highlights of some of the amazing homes and stories featured in our student gallery.  Hopefully they give you ideas and inspiration.  They might also answer some of your questions about building butt and pass log homes.

We often get asked "can women be log home builders?"  Yes, absolutly.  Sherri and Debbie are a great example.  They built a very nice 2-story log home for $20,000.  It's current value is around $400,000.  They did almost all the work themselves, after attending our 2 day log home class.  Neither had previous construction experience.  There's also a great forum thread on this topic. 

How fast can you build a log home?  Well, Tim and his 9 year old daughter put up the shell of their massive lodge in 2 weeks.  They had to work fast, because Tim's daughter only had a 2 week long spring vacation.  Yes that's right, a father and his 9 year old daughter built the shell of a giant 3-story log home in just 2 weeks. 

Here are three good reasons that you shouldn't buy log cabins kits:

1. Expense. The cost of log cabins kits involves shipping logs clear across the country to get from the manufacturer to your location. Someone has to pay for that, right? Why not use local trees that are growing right nearby you instead?
2. The environment. Log cabins kits are built with a flat-wood-on-flat-wood construction method. Wood touching wood will always soak up any water that comes nearby, eventually leading to wood rot. That means you'll need to treat your kit house annually with harsh chemicals, preservatives and sealers, all of which can be bad for the environment and your family.
3. Mortages. In our opinion, bank financing is akin to slavery. As our founder Skip Ellsworth used to say: "If you think building a log home is hard, you should try paying off a 30-year mortgage!"

Looking for an affordable, environmentally-friendly alternative, that can be built by an average man or woman? You should consider the butt and pass method of building log homes instead of log cabins kits. Here are a few articles to get you started:

• Our student log home pictures
• How to build a log cabin
• Student feedback and testimonials
• How to save 50% on building your log home

Log home kits and trailer homes have a lot in common, when you really stop and think about it. But how? Think of it this way:

Any homes that are delivered on the back of a truck are mobile homes, even if they charge a lot of money for them and call them log home kits.

For years and years, folks in the business of making "real" log homes (as opposed to the kit kind) have always sneered at "kit homes". They don't tell you this in the fancy log home kit magazines because -- guess what? The log home kit magazines are bought and paid for by advertising from the kit manufacturers. Most folks in the log home industry refer to log home kits as "mobile homes".

Here are a few reasons why:

If you have spent time looking at log homes, you probably noticed that the vast majority of them are short.  They are either a one story rambler style home or one story with a loft tucked up into the roof -- with dormers to add head room.  Luckily there's a way to build a real, full sized log home... a log home with a real second floor, or even a third floor.

The reason most log homes are only 1 story is because of settling problems.  The vast majority of log homes out there are either kits, or notched log homes.  Those will all experience settling, and require a great deal of complicated and expensive finishing work to compensate for that settling. 

Extra work like adding screw jacks, slip joints for plumbing, keyways, settling space above windows/doors, slip joints at the top of sheet rocked interior walls, maybe even spring loaded nuts, et cetera.  All of those things can help deal with settling, but they really have a 'maximum capacity.'  That means they can only deal with 'so much' settling -- as much that typically happens with a 10-12' tall log wall.  Much higher than that and the problems can really start to develop, so while there are some true 2 story kits out there... most are 1 story.

As the saying goes, "It's always cheaper to build up versus building out."  That means it will be more expensive to build a large kit or notched log home, to get the same square footage as a taller 2 or 3 story log home, because you need to pay for more foundation, and more roofing material.

If you want a full sized log home, instead of a short log home, there is an alternate construction method: the Skip style Butt and Pass log home method.  With the butt and pass method, there is no settling.  That's right, zero settling.  So you can build dang near as tall as you want.

Is it really possible to build log cabins homes from scratch, without a kit? Of course you can! But you can do it the easy way, or the hard way.

Here's the HARD WAY:

• Attend a 2-3 month school for log home building
• Pay that school $3000 to $5000 for the "privilege" of building someone else's house
• Pay for all your own meals, lodging and tools while you are there (this can cost another couple thousand dollars)
• Spend months or years practicing careful notch work, which makes your wall logs weaker (by taking big chunks away, what else can it do?) and makes your house take longer to build
• Build a house that still settles a foot or more and possibly make all of your doors stick, your plumbing break, your windows crack, and your roof sit several inches above your top wall log

Or you can do it the EASY WAY:

• Attend our 2-day weekend class on how to build log cabins homes the right way
• Build your own butt and pass log cabin from scratch without a kit, in less time that it takes to build a kit or notched home
• Use only whole, round logs with all their natural integrity and strength intact
• Build a Butt and Pass log house that doesn't settle, and needs nothing extra to keep your doors, windows, plumbing and roof in tip-top condition
• And if you feel that you need some "hands on" practice, you should volunteer to help another member build a house near you -- they normally return the favor on your home making it a win win situation

Don't believe it can be done? Take a look at our student built log cabins homes gallery and find out for yourself! Here are some other articles you might enjoy:

• Our student log home pictures
• How to build a log cabin

We recently received an email from a member who posted our keep out signs on his property.  He reported that our signs helped solve the problems he had been having with his neighbors and his local code enforcement agency.

If you have looked at kit log cabins, then you've probably noticed they tend to be very expensive. If you found that to be disappointing, then you might be happy to hear that there is a little known secret about how to get kit log cabins for free -- or at least for a shockingly small amount of money.  And the cool thing is that the least expensive 'kit' you can get, is the absolute best one you could possibly build.  It will be the the easiest to build, the quickest to build, the least expensive, the most resistant to water damage, and the strongest.

First off, you should understand exactly what the average log cabin "kit" consists of. A manufacturer typically includes three basic items with a kit: logs, doors, and windows. Sometimes they will include roof material and a porch. A log home at that stage of construction is often called 'dried in' (aka, it's weather tight).  It is vital to understand that a manufacturer can't and won't include finish materials, such as plumbing, electrical, floor coverings, kitchen cabinets, et cetera.

When it comes to pricing kit log cabins, salespeople usually describe it like this:

   1. The actual log cabin kit: $80,000
   2. Materials for finishing your home: $80,000
   3. Labor (with a local general contractor): $80,000

If you've been in the market for a log cabin, then you have surely realized that they are typically very expensive.  On a cost per square foot basis they are generally much more expensive than your standard stick frame home -- but that's only true if you take the traditional route to log cabin ownership.

A stick frame home can cost around $125 per square foot to build, and a log cabin can cost over $200 per square foot to build.  That means you can easily spend about $250,000 to build a 2000 square foot stick frame home, or $400,000 to build a log cabin.  Even if you can get those numbers down by 20%, that's still a heck of a lot of money. 

Financially speaking, wouldn't it be awesome if you could build your own log cabin for as little as $10 or $15 per square foot?  Can you actually build a 2000 square foot log cabin for around $20,000?

That is indeed possible if you take an alternate path to log cabin ownership, which involves building a Skip style Butt and Pass log cabin yourself from scratch.  You can end up with a very high end log cabin, with great resale value, for a shockingly small amount of money.  Here are some real life examples of extremely nice, low cost, log cabins built buy our students. 

In America's super size culture, people can get ahead financially by building small log cabins.  It's the super size culture that has caused many people to buy more home than they could afford, or really need.  Once locked into that mortgage, it ends up being a daily grind just to make ends meet.  By building small, DIY log cabins it's possible to reclaim some financial freedom.  Here are 6 reasons why it makes sense to build a small log cabin, rather than a big one.

Have you ever heard of a butt and pass style log cabin? Most people who are shopping for log cabin kits haven't, and there is a good reason for it.

You will probably learn more about log homes in the next five minutes than you would learn from talking to a log cabin kit salesman for five years. In the next couple of paragraphs we're going to reveal the deep, dark log home secret: butt and pass.

The log home "industry" doesn't want you to know about butt and pass log homes. When you pick up a log home magazine and flip through the pages you will see dozens of log cabin kits that look very beautiful, but you will almost never see a butt and pass style log home. Typically the kit log home magazines show Canadian chinkless and saddle notch log cabins. Why?

The kit magazines are 100% supported by advertising from manufacturers of log cabin kits. And here's the big bombshell:

It is not possible to make log cabin kits out of a proper butt and pass style log home.

The reasons for this have to do with the technical nature of building a butt and pass log home vs. building log cabin kits that must be shipped somewhere else and "reassembled" by a builder. The reasons are too detailed to go into here, but suffice to say that there is no such thing as butt and pass style log cabin kits.

Why should you know about butt and pass log homes?