And the Katahdin begins

I'll see if I can take you guys along for the ride.
We had to take a quick ride to Houlton Maine to order our building.

Here is the foundation. (this is going to be a long ride if I can't figure out how to keep tapatalk from rotating my pics)

And here is the delivery of the first floor deck. Next Monday we get logs.

Chuck Thoits said:

I'll see if I can take you guys along for the ride.
We had to take a quick ride to Houlton Maine to order our building.

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Nice! Are you stacking the logs then?

Darren Wright said:

Nice! Are you stacking the logs then?

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Not yet but we will be soon

Upside down now but the desired outcome.

Right side up. Here is what the log plan looks like. Every log has a number that matches.

Chuck Thoits said:

Not yet but we will be soon

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I'll be interested in seeing how they go together (and the whole build for that matter). I've helped build two, one for my aunt, which used large spikes with splines between the logs, the other my sister's which used long lag bolts. My aunts we ran all the electrical in the metal wall mounted channels and did floor boxes. My sister's we drilled channels in each log as we stacked them and mortised boxes in where needed.

There is a lot of drilling and mortising in electrical boxes in my near future. I think you will find this home pretty interesting, Katahdin does some cool stuff with how they build a home.

At least it's right side up now.

So it all began with a client wanting a log home. We had a chat with Real log homes and they insisted they had to build it so that ened them. We moved on to Katahdin and had a small issue with them having to sell us a home vis their dealer/builder. At that point we brought Ward log homes into the mix. After getting pricing from both and a bit of back n forth with Katahdin. The owner of Katahdin invited us up to have dinner with him and some of his top staff. " You guys come on up on us. We will put you up for the night and feed you dinner. Tomorrow you can go ahead and take a tour of Wards plant and if you still want to buy from them all is good. If you have time after touring thire plant you are welcome to come over and tour our plant. But we feel you really need to come up here and see what you are buying."
So we jumped in the truck for a brief 6 hour ride. We checked into our hotel and settled in at the hotel bar. Ordered the first round and a guy came over to our table introduced himself told us where dinner was going to be and paid for our drinks and we where off to dinner. We eat their food, drank their booze and had a good ol time. Never once did they even whisper any form of a sales pitch. At the end of the night they told us how to get to Ward and reminded us if we had time to stop by on our way home. The next morning we scoped out Wards mill/plant. Here is what we found https://www.google.com/maps/@46.120851,-67.7873754,515m/data=!3m1!1e3 3 guys cutting up cord wood. no logs in the yard and a mill that was at a complete stand still. Kind feeling like we just lost our puppy we went to the main office to find 3 people working and a room full of empty desks. Gave you the feeling that the place was one sale from going under. Talked to them a bit made some changes and got on the road. now Katahdin is a few exits down from Ward so we had to drive right past the place so we stopped in and this is what we found. https://www.google.com/maps/@46.1151584,-68.1635105,728m/data=!3m1!1e3 As you can tell from the link the yard is full of logs and people working. Now you know why they had to get us up to Maine and why they had no sales pitch for us at dinner.

Interesting, they have a pretty good sized yard alright. Do they pre-build the houses on site? I guess some of those building are big enough they could mostly fit them in there?

I'm more used to seeing yards that look like this:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/5...2!3m1!1s0x538068bf1c490937:0xe3dca8a966dc0cd5
where you have a bevy of cranes and they build/fit the entire house in-place then disassemble and ship to the customer.

For the first guys, this is apparently the distillery in the same office park:
http://www.twenty2vodka.com/

That was a good sales pitch they had though

Yup it's between them and the runway. Ward has all the building on airport drive. No they do not assemble the house in the mill yard. The computer has everything dialed in now kinda of like a CNC sawmill. That whole plan is feed into the computer it tells the saw what log to cut, what has to happen to each end, how many drill holes for lags, and what to print on it for a label. So they just cut it, stack it, and ship it.

Ok, yeah - looking at their gallery I see they're basically milling the logs to a specific size as well so that setup makes a lot of sense. Certainly a much more consistent product and cheaper/easier to do at scale than the alternatives.

Most of the log home manufacturers up from where I lived were doing more of the hand fitted log houses, kind of a "natural north woods" feel. I think its a lot of marketing on that side, for clients that want that "rustic log cabin" look (you know those primitive 10,000 square foot multi-million dollar rustic log cabins ). My one grandpa had a neighbor - just a short 2 miles away or 1/2 mile when the lake was frozen enough to drive across - with one of those for quite a few years. I think he lived there maybe 2-3 months out of the year, sometimes less.

It'll be fun to see this one going together.

Interesting Chuck. My wife is retiring in the spring and we have decided to sell our house. We are leaning toward buying/building a small ranch style log home in the Ossipee, Freedom, Tamworth, Sandwich or Chocorua area.

So it is like building a house by the numbers isn't it? Shouldn't pose any big problem to you or so I think. I look forward to see its evolution. Thanks Chuck.

Oh boy, you pirates know how to tug on a persons dreams eh!
Chuck are the logs milled all round to fit or only cut to length a drilled.
Had a look at a Panabobe log home that can be ordered in kit form from B.C. they mill whole log and make bottom side with two grooves and top side two tongues that mate log like Lego.
For future you should check them out with strength of US dollar you could get 30% discount without even asking.
Would be interested in knowing what a log home like that costs in your area minus land.
Like the walk out basement.
Will follow along with great interest.....but you convinced me several years ago to pass on a log home for good reasons and I ain't forgotten.
Thanks for taking us on the ride Chuck.

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Well, sounds like that company knows what it is doing, hopefully this transfers to their knowledge of the logs and assembly. Am sure there will be a hiccup along the way, but you are the man for this job sounds like. What kind of time frame are you working under? 6 most? year? Turn key and they live in or are they doing interior? Just curious.