Designing / BuildingHome & Garden

One of the biggest hang-ups in the process of finding a bank to finance our log home was the 'draw schedule'. The draw schedule is that unique timeline that spells out exactly when the logs themselves will be paid for, when the next installment of payments will be doled out by the bank, etc. It became difficult to get the bank and the log home company to agree on when the actual money would exchange hands. Here's how it went for us.

Following are some tips for working with log siding, plus lots of fun ways to use log siding in other projects around the house.

The number and placement of bathroom doors is one thing that people tend to overlook -- until it's too late. I've learned a few things that might save you some headaches later on, if you're able to address these things before you build.

A collection of facts about doors that will come in handy when choosing the placement of your interior and exterior doors, plus tips that should help when deciding which type of doors to buy.

We qualify for the loans, but there just aren't enough log homes that have been sold recently around here for the banks to use as 'comps' in order to determine a fair appraisal value for our proposed log home. They're coming in way lower than we can build this log home for. And the banks won't budge.

We built a log cabin that is CLOSE to our dream log home, but a few things are lacking. Here are a few things that we would do differently if we were to build a log home again.

Here 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.

It's hard for me NOT to re-subscribe to the 3 log home magazines I've been subscribing to. I mean, we got so much great info from them during that first year of the subscription. But now, we're craving more than these magazines seem willing to provide. If you're contemplating resubscribing to a log home magazine, I'm here to tell you, you may want to check out This Old House magazine instead. Especially if you're already living in your log home... chances are, the log home magazines won't have much to offer you at all.

Take it from us... prior to building a log home, it would be wise to have your contractor survey your lot ahead of time and remove any trees that could compromise your log home site. Several trees fell a little too close to our log home, and we were inches away from serious log home damage.