You've always dreamt of a log home. You've attended the log home shows, read the log home magazines, picked out your floor plan design and you're doing things to save money. 

Now all you need is the log home financing. Should be simple, right? 

Well, considering today's mortgage crisis... wrong! 

Below, I summarize our personal experience with log home financing, as well as provide information and tips that will hopefully help you finance your log home.

Wooo hooo... We got our Building Permit today! Finally.

Here's the funny part. (Well, not funny ha-ha.)

The cost of our Building Permit was $9,177! Jim about had to change his drawers when they called to say our permit was ready to pick up.

To break it down...

The Building Permit itself cost us $1,240
The Plumbing Permit cost us $75
The Mechanical Permit cost us $28

And the worst part:

The Privilege Tax amounted to $7,834

Talk about a bittersweet moment!!!

Here's how Round One of trying to secure financing for our log home went...

Some of you are probably wondering exactly where we are now in this process of building our first log home.

Well, we're held up at the financing stage of the game.

We will have to dig a well at our property, so we turned to Watson Company for answers to our questions about wells.

Here's what we've learned... (lots of fun facts about digging a well and water usage for all to enjoy here).

There's a lot of debate about the "true" cost to build a log home.

That's why I found a Golden Eagle Log Homes ad in the latest issue of Log Home Living magazine (December 2007) so interesting.

I appreciate the fact that they chose to face the facts and state upfront the "true" cost to build one of their log homes.

We specialize in affordably priced, high-quality homes ranging from $115 to $175 per sq. ft."

In the ad, they listed the following estimated prices to build a log home from scratch.

Jim and I have come to the conclusion that we were completely disillusioned about the cost to build a log home... at least here in Middle Tennessee anyway!

So far, we've spoken to 6 general contractors now (4 of whom have many many years of experience building log homes). Each of them told us that we could build a log home for somewhere between $125 - $150 per square foot.

Baloney.