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Sunday, July 20, 2008 |
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Mammoth Log Homes — past and present |
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Friday, 05 October 2007 |
By Stacey Powells
Part Two: Present
People love their log cabins and no one knows more about the emotional attachment people have to their cabins than Mammoth resident John McGrath. “It’s not about stick framing a million dollar home. It’s about saving someone’s memories,” McGrath said in a recent interview. John ‘sort of’ took over the fixing of log cabins from Tom Beveridge. He helped fix Tamarack Lodge in the 1980s and became adept at working with the beams, pulleys and hydraulic jacks needed to lift new logs into place. McGrath has worked at the Valentine Reserve on and off for the last 10 years repairing the weathered log cabins and took on the challenge of trying to figure out what to do with the tree growing in the middle of the old cook’s cabin. The original caretaker of the cabin and of Valentine Reserve, Woody Sampson, added a concrete slab so McGrath had to take out the slab and figure out how to put the logs back the way they were. “It was puzzling, a challenge and it kicked my ass but we did it.”
These days when McGrath is hired to renovate a log cabin he works from the bottom up. The damaged logs are on the bottom so he picks up one side of the house and installs jacks to hold it up as he replaces the rotten logs and continues this around the entire house. “Building or renovating a log cabin means so much to the owners that often they can’t help themselves and you find yourself working side-by-side with the owner,” says McGrath. Dealing with log cabins is hard work and not many people choose that kind of construction but if McGrath has any words of advice they are: “Find the style and manufacture you like and trust and then be prepared for the unexpected.”
When I was given this assignment my first thought was, “Does the Editor know that I’ve been getting Log Home Magazine for years delivered to my mailbox and that my dream house would simply be a log home?” The best part about doing research for a log home article was that I got to explore some of the newest log homes being built in the area. Braden Boyes, the foreman overseeing the Craftsman home being built in Starwood, was only too happy to show me the handiwork being done by his Incline Village based Blue Forest Construction crew. Craftsman homes do their own scribing on the premises and unlike a log home kit where the home is essentially put together once, taken apart, and then put together again on the lot, all custom work is done on the premises of a Craftsman home. As they stack the house, the electrician and plumber are both on site to see exactly where the wiring and the pipes need to go. In the factory they peel the bark and notch the corners but all the posts are notched to the purlings throughout the house and are done by hand.
Larry Tromboli, owner of Sierra Log Homes, designed the log home on lot 27 in Starwood and it came out on five truckloads. When all is said and done, the house will stand at 4600’ square feet. And like all log homes, you have to really love them because it could take years before they are completely settled and dried. “You have to sustain it every year and tend to it to allow for the wood to completely dry and settle,” Boyes said. “Anyone can pick up a skill saw and put a house together but a log home takes much more calculation.”
As I toured the house in Starwood I could definitely imagine where my bedroom would be and where the guest room would be and where my office would be. I knew just the kind of couches I would have in my living room and what kind of countertop in my kitchen. But alas, it wasn’t my log house…yet.
Building a log home today isn’t like it was when homesteading was the norm. Today, one of the first people a potential log home owner will contact is an architect. Elliott Brainard has been dealing with the log home industry since 1989 and has drawn up plans for log homes from new to retro, additions to existing log cabins and renovations to those log homes that needed a little TLC. He started dealing in log home parts and when he was first hired to design an entire log home for Bruce McIntyre in Snowcreek Ranch from start to finish, he was sent to Montana for research. Scooting along Hwy 93 in the Southwest portion of the Big Sky state, he found out how they were crafted, financed and how long the log home companies had been in business. For many years now Elliott has worked with Jeff Alexander of Rocky Mountain Log Homes and Pioneer Log Homes, which cover the gamut of milled vs. handcrafted log homes.
There are two types of log homes: Milled and Handcrafted. In a nutshell, a milled log home is based on a fully automated, computer-generated process. The architect gives the drawings to the manufacturer, in this case Rocky Mountain Log Homes out of Montana, and then RMLH establishes ‘shop drawings’ in which all dimensions of the home are input into the software program. The elements of the software program lead into the cutting tools which in turn cut the logs based on the dimensions of the home that were initially based on the architect drawings. It’s all automated. Amazing. No ax. Only computers and wood. Ordering a milled log home is much faster and more precise than a handcrafted home and they can be drawn from any angle but if you have Daniel Boone blood running through your veins, there is another option.
Hand crafted log homes are a bit different. The logs can be raw depending on the company used or they can be from a grove of standing dead trees which are a result of either a fire or from an infestation of the bark beetle. (The beetle only eats the cambium – or gooey – layer between the bark and wood and has since moved on before the log is installed in your home). So in other words, the dead trees still standing from the Angora fire in Tahoe a few months ago could be part of your home in a year if the Forest Service will sell them to a log home company. Drawings for Handcrafted log homes are designed from the roof down because the roof layout and pitch is determined by the diameter of the log. The owner will decide the diameter of the log and each notch is cut by hand or chainsaw (which is held by someone’s hand) for a much more rustic appearance. Handcrafted homes are also coped by hand (when the logs come together to fit in a notch) and because of that, there is more precision so there is less settling of the log home over the years.
Over the decades there have been distinguished eras of log home construction. The log homes on the Valentine Reserve were built with the trees that were cut down on the property and built by hand, using very few tools. In the 70s and 80s a lot of log home companies were manufacturing homes but on a smaller scale. They didn’t have a lot of windows and were pretty simple in terms of room structure within the perimeter of the home itself. In the early 90s log home construction went from small to the square footage of a regular size home with lots of glass, more complicated roof lines and much more sophisticated angles and lots and lots of extras.
We love our log homes but the log home industry is running up against a material supply issue. Many log home manufacturers only use standing deadwood and there is not enough supply to meet the demand and they have to go farther north to get their supplies, some of it now coming out of Canada.
No matter how you look at it, building a log home can be 25 percent more expensive than a conventional house and that trend will continue, especially as the standing deadwood supply continues to be depleted. But I still have hope. I hope that one day I too will be the proud owner of a handcrafted log home, probably designed by Elliott. Most likely paid for by those winning Lotto numbers I keep playing week after week.
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Mammoth Real Estate Times,
452 Old Mammoth Road, 2nd Floor,
Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546 Phone: 760-934-3929
Copyright © 2008 The Mammoth Times All Rights Reserved
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