Yesterday I was minding my own business and surfing real estate sites. I happened to notice an advertisement that promoted One House At A Time charity. I have never been much of a charity person, but this one stopped me. It was about building houses for people who lost their home for hurricane Katrina.

After being stopped for quite some time, I started thinking. What if I drop my “don’t be evil attitude” and pick up a “do good attitude”. I want to be part of providing houses for those in need, and I want to do even more. Here’s my plan: I ask people to link to One House At A Time and as a reward I will link to their site and donate one dollar for One House At A Time project. I hope I won’t run out of money.

Edit: Oh, just a short addition, send me an email after you have the link up and I’ll add you to a list with everyone that has taken part into linking. Just use “loghomes” and my domain when you send the email.

Edit2: I will run this project until the end of January and I set a limit of 1000 dollars, in case there are thousands and thousands of people wanting to give a link to One House At A Time.

Edit3: Maybe this is the final edit move that I have to do. The rules are:

1. Email me the link to the page, where you give them a link and I will link to you.
2. I will give one dollar for One House At A Time for your link.

I bought myself another log home book. This time it’s Jim Cooper’s Log Homes Made Easy. First I will read it and review will come shortly after finishing the book. First impressions are: workbook or handbook styled, lots of tables and sheets, down to earth…

I chose this book, because the previous book that I reviewed was builder orientated. This time I wanted to take another approach, the approach of a contractor. Here the most important aspect isn’t how to build but how to compare and buy the right stuff. Hope this book will answer that sort of questions.

I got tired fighting against a tidal wave of spammy comments so I turned them off and slept my nights like a baby.

However, I read this post at Lifehack.org and felt the nasty sting of a bad conscious. I think I should make it easier for you to interact with the stuff that I write.

It’s again comments open here at Loghomescabin, in case someone would like to ask a question or give a comment, without the hassle of writing an email to me. Now the next task waits ahead. I’d better write an introductory page where you can get all the necessary background information about me and this site.

Here is a good visit if you are interested in real estate – BiggerPockets. They have a group writing project called “2007 Real Estate Goals Group Writing Project” that I want to be part of.

Related to log cabins and log homes, I have three goals that are worth to mention for the year 2007.

1. Complete the lakeside log cabin sauna.
This is the most time sensitive project that I have going at the moment. For the moment the sauna is in weather-locked state. It can manage these terrible weather conditions (constantly raining here) that Finland has had during this winter. However, it is pretty much out of use, as there is no floor, just the concrete foundation etc. I have to finish the inside work to be able to test it by Mid Summer. Future master log home that will be erected just next to the log cabin sauna is not on the to-do-list during this year since financial requirements are too massive. Possibly during 2008 or 2009, oh… who knows… Anyway, ask me how the sauna felt just after Mid Summer.

2. Complete an agent agreement with one Finnish log home company.
Being an agent has been one of my long-term goals and until now I haven’t been actively pushing this forward. During the 2007 I want to set this project in motion, anyway it will still be a long-term plan or could I say part of my lifestyle. I know majority of Finnish log home companies and I definitely have my favorites. My choice is among mid-sized players, because bigger companies already have extensive foreign sales network and smaller companies can’t provide enough support. Announcements should come before year’s end.

3. Find a nice piece of land for coming residential log home project.
I have a plan to build an urban log home for my family to live in. Since this is a permanent home location has to be perfect for all eternity. The picture on the top of my website comes pretty close but unfortunately is protected so building is forbidden. Tricky thing here is that finding the perfect place might happen or might not. I can only promise that I start to study available lots and get an accurate image of overall prices. Knowing the market makes coming decisions easier.

I wish all you readers have a wonderful year 2007. Let your log home or log cabin dreams come true (and all other dreams as well).

This is another cabin that is very close to me. I built it for my cousin together with my father. Cabin has been standing tall for almost ten years now, but unfortunately it doesn’t get used much these days.

Cabin has the look of a squared log home, but actually using post and beam technique with wood paneling as siding makes it look like one. In case you want to know more about post and beam building, please go and read this book.

I had my log cabin kit and my winding forest road to my lot. Cabin kit was supposed to function as a lakeside sauna. Having sauna this close to the lake is going to enrich the lake water. Therefore I had to get myself a small infiltrating system to treat the wash water produced by the use of sauna.

I turned to Labko® Saunakaivo 300, which is very small system, designed for minimal usage. Unfortunately I wasn’t clever enough to photograph the installation process (I also should have done that for the road construction). I’ll be a tad wiser next time.

Lakeside property and beautiful view are nothing if you can’t get there, hence road was needed. Several trees had to be felled in order to clear the way for the passage. Then we turned over the soil and drove some gravel and sand on the spot. Tedious work but at the end of the day (took couple of months in real life) we had our road.

Do you want to see it? Here is a picture, nice view, eh?

Oh, you know it! I was just pulling your leg. We didn’t manage anything as grand as that, but the road we cleared is enough for us. Here is a picture of our road and as evidence a tractor parked on it so you know that it is solid.

Now that we have convenient access to the lot, it will be lot easier to service the construction site. However, that is a subject for another post.

The story so far:

Get a phone call – check!
Get a crazy idea – check!
Get a cabin kit – check!
Get a piece of land – what?

Honestly it didn’t come as a surprise for me. I already knew that land was coming my way, so I only had to come up with an idea what to do with it. Newly bought log cabin kit gave a purpose for the lakeside lot.

Before I start to go through the visual documentary of my own log cabin project, I’d like to build a foundation for the story. It started long ago, back in 1997 when my cousin told that he had a million dollar opportunity (actually it was a two thousand dollar opportunity, but let’s not mind about that). He had come across two cheap Honka log cabin kits that just screamed to be bought.

After a quick phone call, Honkarakenne made some arrangements and following day the log cabin kit was resting in my cousin’s garage. Actually at that point there were two of them, but since this is a story of only one of those cabins… You’ll just have to follow the storyline of the late bloomer. Unfortunately it took almost a decade from the kit to finally make it to present location by the lake. But that is a topic for a whole new picture.