Designing a One-of-a-Kind Log and Timber Home

Now that they’ve built their dream home, log and timber homeowners reveal ways they recommend for making a home uniquely yours.

In any home project, your lifestyle should drive the design. That’s especially true when you are planning to downsize, but want to avoid losing comfort. Your home designer should ask about your lifestyle in order to understand how you will use the spaces in your home and figure out where to save space.

“It’s almost like an interview,” says a spokesperson for StoneMill Log & Timber Homes (Knoxville, TN). “I try to get a feel for their lifestyle. How do you plan to live in your home? Do you entertain? Will you have family over?”

There’s plenty of joy at the prospect of making your dream home a reality. Choosing to build a new home is an opportunity to make a better life for yourself and your family.

That’s why we contacted log and timber homeowners to ask what they would do differently to make their home uniquely theirs. Keep their lessons in mind when you’re designing your dream home.

1. Don’t Rush the Design Phase

Devote a year or more to designing your dream home to ensure you get it right. “I have very few things I’d change on this home, but I spent 15 years designing it,” says Clark Thompson, who built a 4,100 square foot BK Cypress (Bronson, FL) home in Waynesville, North Carolina.

2. Organize Your Research

Carol Cullum recommends organizing your research, both digitally and physically. “I bought every magazine, plan book and log home book I could get my hands on,” says Carol Cullum, who built a 3,000-square foot home from Hearthstone Homes (Newport, TN) in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with her husband Gary. “We would cut out pictures of kitchens, bedrooms, great rooms or products we liked, then organized them into folders.”

3. Create Convenient Workspace

Bob and Susan Bowman say their new 4,000-square foot handcrafted log home in Castle Pines, Colorado is everything they dreamed—except for providing convenient computer space. “I wished I designed a computer workstation in the kitchen, or near it,” says Susan. “Our laptops and our work always end up on the dining room table. We have to move it for entertaining.”

4. Make Every Square Foot Count

Sandra and Steven Selengut adore their 5,000-square foot timber frame home from Hearthstone Homes (Newport, TN), set on the edge of a saltwater marsh on Johns Island in South Carolina. “But I think we could have had more house for our money it we’d made a few design changes,” says Sandra. “Our timber frame is octagonal and I think if I’d squared it up a little I’d have a little more closet and storage space.”

5. Wraparound Porch

Covered porches are not only pleasing to the eye and a fun place for friends and family to gather, but they are also functional. “I have a porch on three sides of our home. But I wished I’d put it on all four sides, says Clark Thompson. “It’s a good way to protect your log walls from the sun and rain, so you don’t have to stain as often.”

6. More Garage, Please

To accommodate toys and tools, more garage space was sought after by many homebuyers. Beth Cipperly, who has a walk-out basement with a one-door garage on her 1,600-square-foot log and timber home in Valley Falls, New York, says she and her husband John wished they made it a two-door. “We have to move our car out to get to the motorcycle. It would have been more convenient to have two garage doors.”

According to the National Association of Home Builders, two-thirds of all new homes have two-car garages today and 20 percent have three-car or more garages.

7. Place Laundry On Main Level

For convenience’s sake, homebuyers recommend having the laundry on the main level. Those that have placed in the basement or upstairs on a two-story home have invariably regretted it. “We opened up our master suite and did away with a hallway and the laundry room. Now our laundry room is in the finished basement, which is fine today. But I don’t know how I’m going to feel going up and down those stairs 10 years from now,” says Sandra Selengut.

8. Increase Storage Space

Comedian George Carlin once said our homes are merely piles of stuff with a cover on it. This truth is reflected in the wish for more storage by many homeowners. They recommend adding it under stairs, in the basement, near the front and side doors, near bathrooms and in the laundry room.

9. Hearth Placement for Heating

While it’s often difficult to balance hearth position with the view, window placement, traffic flow, and TV viewing, homeowners recommend you err on the side of good heat distribution. “We think if we had opted for a corner unit in our design, it would have heated our home more effectively,” says Beth Cipperly.

Others say they were pleased with their decision to have two hearths—a wood-burning fireplace on the main floor and a gas unit in the basement, or vice versa, depending on your individual preferences. “We didn’t want to be carrying logs down those stairs and ashes up,” says Carol Cullum.

10. Money Saving Tips

• Delay the asphalt or concrete driveway installation for a few years. The Bowmans delayed their driveway, which saved them $25,000 off the initial construction cost.
• If you have DIY skills tackle some jobs yourself, such as installing flooring or framing the basement. This saved the Cipperlys at least $20 a square foot in costs.
• Invest in high-quality windows. Clark Thompson says his Andersen 400 series windows and doors save 25% on his heating and cooling bills.
• If one can afford the up-front costs, opt for windows with mini blinds installed between the layers of glass. This eliminates the expense of window coverings, plus you never have to clean the blinds, says Sandra Selengut.
• While skylights are great, solar tubes were a quarter of the cost, say the Bowmans.