A Spacious Log Home Made for Easy Living

Efficiency, longevity and rustic beauty allow an active Pennsylvania log home owner to take it easy.

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This log cabin’s design takes advantage of its sloping site. The rolling hills provide a perfect opportunity to incorporate a walkout basement and a terraced outdoor hearth.

Photos courtesy of Timberhaven Log & Timber Homes

Being the vice president of an investment firm, as well as a martial arts champion, makes for one demanding life. So where does a person of this level of intensity go for a little R&R? A log home of course.

The place didn’t need to be large — it just needed to be well designed. Enter Timberhaven Log & Timber Homes located Middleburg, Pennsylvania.

“Our client wanted to build a recreational getaway/training studio on a piece of property his family has owned for decades,” says Brad Mercer, Timberhaven’s corporate sales manager.

“Based on what he wanted in terms of size and amenities, I went to our plans book and showed him our ‘Valley View I’ plan, which is 1,331 square feet. He liked what he saw, but he had a few changes, like almost all customers do.”

Among the custom modifications to the stock plan, the client added a porch spanning the front of the home, opened the dining room to the great room and opted for a full walkout basement.

With Brad’s guidance, the master suite was moved from its original main-level location to the second floor, while a guest room is located downstairs. For additional sleeping space, a conditioned bunkhouse was designed above the garage.

“We were able to modify the plan to fit his needs in about an hour,” Brad says.

To construct the home, the customer chose Timberhaven’s “Premium Engineered Log Package.” The logs are eastern white pine in a 6-by-8-inch, D-shaped profile with a mortise-and-tenon corner assembly; however the logs are laminated, not cut from a single piece of timber.

“Engineered logs are our specialty,” Brad explains. “We use oversized plywood, dried to nine-percent moisture content, that are glued together and then planed and cut to the log size and profile the buyer wants. The result is a very strong, non-settling system that has virtually no checking. That’s a huge maintenance point for our customers. About 70 percent of our clients select this product over our solid kiln-dried logs. And once assembled, you can’t tell it’s not built with solid-log components.”

To finish the structure, the logs were coated in Sashco’s Transformation stain and preservative in “medium red” on the outside and two coats of clear, water-based polyurethane inside, except for the collar ties and the great room’s king-post truss, which is stained in walnut.

A Tamko 50-year architectural shingle roof, Timbertech composite decking and manufactured Eldorado stone in “bluffstone” all contributed to desire to make the home as maintenance-free as possible. So this active log home owner can spend less time keeping it up and more time relaxing in the lifestyle he longed for.