Two separate stories below, one about a log home in Oregon and another about a log home in California. Some topics just keep boomeranging back.

By Janet Eastman

When Pete Pappas tells people he lives in a log home, he can see by their reaction the picture forming in their minds: A little Lincoln log cabin. Then they come to visit and their rustic visions are instantly replaced with another design style: Rusticratic.

The Pappas’ 7,500-square-foot residence in Roseburg is a log cabin in the same way that Crater Lake is a watering hole. The logs here are 3-feet wide and some span almost 60 feet, crossing the three-car garage and looming over the grand living room. An increasingly popular method of combining logs with post and beam construction allow for these large expanses.

Making this house distinct, too, is the exposed natural artistry of the logs. The manufacturer, Pioneer Log Homes of British Columbia, digs deep to remove not just the part of the tree above the ground, but also the buried trunk, all the way to the root. These wavy, floral- and leaf-shaped trunk flares, intact on the end of the treated logs, are highly prized adornments and are positioned at the front entrance and throughout the Pappas home.

“Trees don’t grow like a telephone poll, so we take these shapes from Mother Nature and incorporate them into the house,” said Bryan Reid, Sr., who built his first log home for his family with a handsaw, ax and chisel in 1970. In 1973, he started Pioneer Log Homes in Williams Lake, British Columbia, an area thick with standing dead Lodgepole pine and Western Red cedar trees.

Owners appreciate the idealized warmth of these old-fashioned homes and the real way in which logs radiate and insulate heat. The Pappas family rarely turns on the heater in spring and fall.

Some owners have worked hard to make these naturally energy-efficient dwellings even more environmentally friendly. They are careful to choose builders who participate in sustainable forestry methods. They design to minimize their footprint and site their home to maximize passive cooling and heating. They include solar systems, Energy Star windows and appliances, water-saving toilets and fixtures, low- or no-VOC stains, and rainwater collectors.

And yet, they can’t overcome the biggest eco ache about log homes: They use old growth. Near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, an obscenely bloated log residence – at 114,000 square feet, so far the largest – boasts a 900-year-old Western Red cedar as a structural component.

Pioneer Log Homes’ [Bryan] Reid admits he has deep-pocket owners in search of a statement. One of his log homes in Grants Pass has a 1,400-square-foot indoor basketball court. But he says the typical size of his custom homes is 2,500 to 4,000 square feet.

In defense, he says his log homes are sustainable, having been engineered and rated to last 300 or more years. “Not many framed homes can say that,” says Reid, adding that the logs he uses have natural resistance to rot, insects and fire.

Cost for design plans and the log shell start at $200 per square foot, but quickly escalate, depending on upgrades and the intricacy of the floor and roof system. “People might plan to put in a $100 kitchen sink, then the house comes and they think it deserves more,” Reid says. “A lot of people build their log home to hand down to their children. It becomes a family legacy.”

Building a Storybook

Laura Pappas lived in a log home when she was attending Glendale High. Years later, when her husband Pete proposed the idea of building a house made of logs, she wasn’t thrilled. “I didn’t want to be limited to a certain style,” says Laura, who only knew of full stack log homes, where logs form the walls. “I love to use paint to add color and I wanted walls I could hang pictures on. I couldn’t relate to that log home stereotype look.”

Then the couple learned of houses that have a log shell, post and beam construction and plaster walls. Half of Pioneer Log Homes’ orders are for this kind of combination, says Reid. Laura could have her flat, gold- and clay-colored walls.

Pete, a true do-it-yourselfer and owner of a construction company, took Laura’s wishes and his sketches to Pioneer Log Homes’ staff architect and designers. While the shell was being handcrafted in Canada, Pete laid the foundation with his employees at Rock-Co Construction. Erecting the two-story shell took three days with the help of Pioneer Log Homes’ crew. Then Pete got started on the interior.

Inside, vertical posts are broad enough for the Pappas kids – Bo, 8, Layla, 6, and Amy, 3 – to play hide-and-seek. Wide beams shoot across the ceilings and down hallways. Logs outline doorways and windows, tower over stair railings and bookshelves, and hover over beds, sofas and wide-screen TVs. But Pete says, “Every log in here is holding up something. None is just for aesthetics.”

Pete says he still has a To-Do list. He’s halfway through completing an underground game room, which he’s crafted to look like a mineshaft. He wants to finish the landscaping and add ponds and a bridge crossing over a creek.

“We basically built the house to raise our family in,” says Pete, who is now the Oregon rep for Pioneer Log Homes of British Columbia. “I like the home’s character and handwork. It gives me the feeling that I’m in a lodge and on vacation all the time.”

Laura says, “It’s like living in a storybook.” The Pappas house overlooks Melrose Vineyards with its tidy acres of grapevines. “I never thought I’d have a house like this. My husband got to put his ideas to work and our children have a big, open playroom that’s like a park.”

The Pappas children tell friends they live in a giant tree house. Like the doubting adults who also hear about this log cabin, they’ll just have to wait to see it to appreciate it.

Pioneer Log Homes of British Columbia

351 Hodgson Road

Williams Lake BC

Canada V2G 3P7

(877) 822-5647

www.pioneerloghomesofbc.com

Elegance is in, antlers are out

By Janet Eastman

June 23, 2005 

WHEN Andrea Geller is doing chores inside her log house in Big Bear, she often thinks about the homemakers who pioneered the land – how they scrubbed clothes with a washboard, baked bread in a smoky kitchen fireplace, swept dirt floors. Then she turns back to her work, pushing buttons on a sleek black washing machine, a stainless steel oven, a high-powered vacuum cleaner.

When she’s done, the French doors in her log house’s bedroom lead to a viewing deck with a sunken hot tub. There are silk-covered chairs and English antiques in the living room, a crystal chandelier in the dining room and a travertine-tiled master bath modeled after a four-star spa.

Ah, the rustic life.

With 25,000 upscale log homes being built every year by stress-escaping city slickers, it’s time to close the door on the idea of the termite-riddled, drafty cabin of yore. If there are deer antlers over the mantelpiece or a fly-fishing vest hanging on a wooden peg inside a new log home, they’re probably props.

“There are no more raccoons in the rafters,” says Michael McCarthy, editor of Log Home Living, a glossy monthly magazine that showcases what’s been called “rusticratic” living. “New log homes are bigger, grander than the old fishing cabin. They are highly styled and engineered, and furnished with granite countertops, high-speed wiring and every conceivable convenience.” He even has a nickname for them: “Gucci rustics.”

Ralph Kylloe, author of “The Rustic Cabin: Design & Architecture,” thinks the rustic lifestyle is more popular today because “we spend our days in buildings made of Sheetrock and filled with highly manipulated furniture and we drive our metal vehicles on concrete roads. We crave nature, but we also don’t want to give up the luxuries that the modern world offers.”

The luxuries inside the Gellers’ chic chalet – gold faucets, heirloom chiming wall clock, plush velvet chaise longue – are reminiscent of the Adirondack Great Camps. In the Gilded Age leading up to the Great Depression, the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and other social titans built wilderness estates in the New York mountains.

Like the designers of Great Camps, there are still artisans who will handcraft a log home, but most buyers turn to one of 400 manufacturers in the U.S. that sell construction-ready logs along with the blueprints to build.

The average cost of building a log home is $120 a square foot, but it can leap to $350 to $500 if built in places with high labor costs such as Aspen or Telluride, Colo., plus the cost of land. McCarthy has seen log homes as large as 10,000 square feet, but a typical size is 2,000 square feet.

Builders have improved the structure and engineering of log homes. Logs are dried and treated better to prevent shrinking, rot and nibbling insects. Computerized saws can produce profiles that are rounded, flat, chinked or tongue-and-groove, and pieces that dovetail precisely for airtight, energy-efficient fits.

The thick logs burn slower than spindly 2-by-4s, helping these homes during a fire, and they’re more soundproof. “I could stand outside and scream your name but you wouldn’t hear me through these logs,” says Alan Geller, 57, who moved with his wife, Andrea, 55, to Big Bear full-time last year after selling their Century City townhouse.

Twelve years ago, Alan and Andrea visited friends who had a cabin in Big Bear and the couple started reminiscing about the fun times spent outdoors when they were younger. Andrea’s terrace container plants couldn’t match the allure of alpine. The Gellers, who own the hosiery business Angel Intimates, bought a weekend getaway near their friends and added rooms and half-log siding.

One afternoon when they were driving up the mountain, Andrea turned to Alan and asked, “What are we doing?” Why were they in the city when they could be living and working here?

They bought three acres of land sprinkled with hundreds of pines, cypress and oaks, about four miles from Sugarloaf and 7,000 feet higher than Century City and became design-it-yourselfers. They sat in folding chairs on the property to figure out where the house should be. Andrea picked out a pine and decided it would be in the middle of the circular driveway; everything else fell into place. She then sketched a 3,500-square-foot main house and a detached 2,000-square-foot guest house, garage and office.

“We still wanted to work,” says Andrea, “just not while fighting traffic or staring at smog. And when it’s 5 p.m., we wanted to be enjoying the outdoors.”

They took their drawings to Sugarloaf-based builder Brad Lindley and designers at Sierra Log Homes, who executed the architectural plans. For a year, a dozen workers were on the site, cutting the 13-inch-thick lodgepole pine logs and assembling the pieces.

“To see them erect these homes is like going back in time a couple hundred years,” says Alan. “These workers put their heart and soul into this, and they have welcomed us as a part of their community. When we have parties, our friends are our plumber, electrician.”

Local woodworker Tim Blyler sculpted a Craftsman-style front door, mantels, cabinets and bar, all stained ebony. “The simplicity of Arts and Crafts style works well with the simple lines of the logs,” says Andrea. “And I like the contrast between the blond pine logs and the darker wood furnishings. Neither overpowers the other.”

Andrea wanted smooth drywall surfaces to make the living room, dining room and master bedroom brighter and lighter looking. “Some log homes feel closed in to me because you’re boxed in by wood,” she says. Sunlight flickers in through soaring two-story-high windows, and the fabrics and walls are a soothing palette of cream, yellow and burgundy.

She also wanted to bring her fine antiques from the city. In the living room, a petite English writing desk with gold inlays sits between two silk-covered armless chairs. The velvet sofa faces shiny chinoiserie tray tables. She designed a corner of the room to accommodate a favorite antique etagere.

“I didn’t want to sacrifice elegance,” says Andrea. “But in this setting, the pieces seem more approachable, less stuffy.”