Discovering the First Log House

This was right before Labor Day weekend, 1996. I was the first to call Wayne, so he gave me first choice. I went to see it, scampering down a steep, weed covered hill to view a vine covered, abandoned house. But there were logs under the old clapboard siding. I told Wayne about my doubt, but asked if he would give me through labor day to tear away at the siding and that I would be able to get a better assessment of the actual size of this job. So Betty and I and our four kids, aged 5 to 15 years, tore at it for the next three days. What we found was a nearly perfectly preserved 16 by 20 foot house of all white oak logs. It was a full two stories tall and dated to 1826.

It took us two months of team work, meeting there after work and full weekends to strip away 175 years of materials. Carefully stacking and moving clapboard, window sashes, plank doors and pine flooring, bricks and stone, we uncovered the log crib. We hired a crew that specializes in log and stone reconstruction to disassemble and move our house. On November 6th they loaded the entire tagged and numbered logs onto a giant lumber truck and moved them to our the future site of our log house.