Log Home Care

One major difference between log homes and what the rest of the world lives in, is that log homes are mostly organic. While concrete, steel, and dry wall holds up most places, log homes are living, breathing, pieces of nature that unfortunately begin to deteriorate much quicker than normal building materials. That is…unless we take care of them properly. This is where Sansin Enviro Stains come in. Dating back to ancient times when the tribes of Norway learned to use the resin and gums seeping from surrounding trees as a way to protect their churches from the elements, the methods used to create Sansin Enviro Stains are as old as time itself.

The company has developed their stain with the idea “keeping the world green” in mind. Instead of simply sitting on top of the wood like average stains do, Enviro Stain goes deep into the wood and actually connects with it’s cell structure. With 80 colors to choose from, there’s no way you won’t be able to match the look of your log home. Here are just a few of the amazing colors they have to offer:

Cedar          

Heartwood

Red Oak        

Honey          

Colonial        

With products for interiors and exteriors, Sansin products help fight mold by “”loading” the wood with decay-fighting ingredients, migrating deep into timber - even under dry wood conditions”. Protect your home from “dry rot, wet rot, fungi, algae or insect attacks. And can be used as a remedial treatment - to protect a structure already damaged by insects, rot or fungus - or as a preventative and maintenance treatment” Plus in addition to stain and mold protect, Enviro Stains also offer a line of cleaning products especially designed with wood protection and the environment in mind. Aqua-gard, Wood-sealer, Wood-cleaner, Paint/Stain remover, Wood Lightener, and a Multi-wash are just a few of the other ways Sansin Enviro Stain is helping maintain the look of your log home.

If your cabin has taken a beating this winter, do yourself a favor and don’t loose that color you love. Simply check out their full line of products at Sanin.com and restore your log home today!!

Everywhere around us dirt is in the air. If you live in Southern California you can literally see it floating above the cities. A permanent clod of pollution. If your life is more a relaxed country type existence, the dirt around you may be less obvious but it’s still there. Every time the door opens (which if you have kids  seems to be every 10 minutes) a new gust of wind carrying bits of the outdoors rushes into your log home and sticks to whatever it finds inside.

Once a week my wife makes it a point to dust the house. Over the years she’s created a circuit starting with the entertainment center and ending with the bedroom dresser. What about the walls though? Regardless if you live in a log home or a condo, the walls get just as dirty as the floors we vacuum once a week. If you don’t believe me just take a picture off the wall and remember what your they first looked like before there was something covering them.

As log home owners we pride ourselves on the construction of our homes. We painstakingly handpick the stain of the logs we will be surrounding ourselves with. We match everything that goes into our log homes according to how they coordinate with the look we’ve chosen. So how do we keep them clean? I posed that question to the folks at EHOW who claim to know “How To Do Just About Everything” and here’s what they had to say:

Step One-Attach the upholstery attachment to your vacuum cleaner and vacuum the walls first to remove cobwebs and loose dust.

Step Two-Choose a cleaner that is safe for use on wood. Any cleaner intended for wood floors is safe to use to clean the walls of a log cabin home. Dilute with water in a pail following the instructions on the cleaner bottle.

Step Three-Use a sponge mop with a good head on it to clean the parts of the wall you can not reach. Be sure that the head is in good condition so the metal part of the mop does not poke through and scratch the wood surface.

Step Four-Start at the top of the wall near the ceiling and work your way down so that dirty water is not dripping onto the part you already cleaned. Mop the wall the way you would mop a wood floor, rinsing your mop head frequently.

Step Five-Wash the lower surfaces of the wall using a hand held sponge.

These are some great tips and just to re-emphasize, make sure the cleaner you choose is safe to use on your wood. If you’re not sure pick a  section of wall behind a couch or inside a closet and apply a small amount there first. If the wood isn’t affected, the cleaner should be ok to use elsewhere.

One look at the cabin above and you’d probably think it had recently been built from scratch. However, considering that the cabin was built  over 20 years ago nothing could be farther from the truth. What once was a medium sized 2,500 square foot cabin built by a former Georgia sheriff, is now the very modern home of Linda and Ron Silber.  Ron, a packaging salesman, and Linda , a home planning consultant, were living in New York at the time and wanted a place that would act as an escape from city life. With it’s private beach and double deck stretching over the waters of Lake Lanier, the Silbers found the perfect cabin to get away from it all.

Over the years the Silbers have made some improvements to the cabin from a dramatic increase in size (the cabin is now over 5,500 square feet) to subtle touches such as making sure the logs used for the renovations were the same color as the ones already in place. The master bedroom was converted to a guest room, a wall was removed in order to provide a better view of the waters stretching out back, and a porch that wraps around the back of the house perfect for lazy days curled up with a book and a glass of wine was added. Thanks in part to better heating/cooling bills ( a direct result of living in a log home) and Linda’s history as a champion water skier, seven years later the couple has decided to make their weekend get away their permanent residence.

As a lover of log homes I have to say it’s one thing to build a cabin from the ground up, but there has got to be something said about updating a home. It would have been extremely easy for the Silbers to build a brand new home, but instead they did some creative recycling and turned a cabin that was more than likely well past it’s prime into something that will be enjoyed by generations to come.

With most of the country covered in snow and the rest of us getting rained on at least a couple times a week, now more than ever your home is susceptible to weather damage of some sort. In particular your prized deck that you refuse to leave for 4 months out of the year, may just be rotting right under your feet. The reason is similar to the one you have probably faced recently with your gutters. Debris from near by trees keeps clogging things up.

Like the gutters wrapped around your home, the cracks between the boards that make up your deck act as pathways for running water. As the rains pours down, the spaces between the boards allow for drainage and prevent puddles from forming. But what do you do when again like your gutters, those gaps between your deck floors become clogged with pine needles, leaves, and other types of debris?

If we were talking roofs you’d simply use a tool such as the one to the right and the job would be done in a matter of minutes.

Obviously this won’t work on your deck and though you could pull out that pressure washer to get the job done, they tend to do more harm than good when it comes to wood surfaces. Well recently I came across the Deck Flosser and am now convinced it’s the only way to clean those gaps in your deck properly without scratching the wood or worse hurting your back. The Deck Flosser by Rittenhouse easily gets in between the wood and rids it of all that debris that causes puddles to form every time it rains. With a convenient shape, foam grips, and an adjustable depth range, the Deck Flosser doesn’t just do decks. Bricks, patio stones, roof shakes, virtually any hard to reach place can be cleaned with ease thanks to this awesome new product. You could even use it to clean between the very logs that surround your cabin.

Think about your alternatives: you could cut down all the trees around your home, pave over the deck with concrete, do nothing and watch you desk disappear before your eyes, get on your hands and knees with a screwdriver and dig the debris out, or you could take five minutes with the Deck Flosser and save yourself thousands of dollars in repair costs. The Deck Flosser. Yet another way The Log Homes Journal is helping you live the log cabin life you’ve always dreamed of.

As log home builders, lovers, and enthusiasts our passion for our homes comes from a love of the environment we surround them in. What good is a cabin without a view of the mountains to place it in front of? Why build a deck if you don’t love watching the sun come up over the lake every morning. You know why you never see log cabins in the middle of the city? Because there’s nothing to look at but steel and cement. Everything about the way we design our log homes is connected to nature. From the very logs that form our walls to the antler chandelier we eat lunch under every afternoon to the wooden bunk beds our children sleep in every night. We spend our free time fishing and hiking and our work time dreaming of fishing and hiking.

With the world shrinking around us by the minute it’s up to us to make sure the nature we love is alive and well long after we are gone. After all if we don’t take care of our forests and rivers, who will? Some city kid that’s never stepped foot off of black top before? Don’t count on it.

This brings me to my latest discovery Buy Green Now. Buy Green Now is mainly a place for individuals to purchase carbon offsets (the act of reducing your environmental impact by paying others to do such things as planting trees, building wind farms, etc..) but the site also offers Green Ornaments that are quickly becoming a must have for any Christmas tree. The ornament is made from cilantro or chili seeds. Once the holidays are over, simply plant them in the ground and reap what you sow (fresh cilantro and good karma). Too late for Christmas? The site also offers green wedding packages, green birthday cards, and a green chili pepper for those “Just saying hello” moments. All can be planted. Plus the money spent will go to refurbishing forests all across this country. What better way to celebrate the life and land you love than by making more of it generations to come.