Home Kits

If ever you are of the mind to own your own home, a log cabin home, log homes kits are the best thing to come around since sliced bread. Now, allow me to dispel a misconception here... by the sound\nof it, the concept of building a log home from a kit sounds almost like there would be a resulting many of the same design homes dotting the landscape, as though they were all popped out of molds, or\na log cabin cookie cutter, if you will. I\'m here to tell you that this just simply could not be any farther from the truth. There are countless designs to choose from, and all have room for changes\nto be made to each one, allowing great space and room for individuality from home to home. The \"kit\" part of this whole concept lies in something else entirely - allow me to explain...\n

The concept of log homes kits does not mean uniformity of house plans or designs. There is a sense of uniformity, but it all lies in the cut of the logs, how they fit together, and in their\nability to be custom created to fit according to the individual designs of each log cabin. This is not only to provide ease of construction, but also to reduce by inordinate amounts the time it takes\nto complete the construction of a log-built structure. Basically, when you receive a kit, you get a complete package of all of the parts needed to build your log home - the logs themselves, the\nflooring, all windows and doors, and if not gotten separately, even all the \"built-ins\", such as kitchen cabinetry, for example. All parts are marked for proper placement and in the order they are to\nbe constructed in.

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Now, imagine building a log home not from a kit, but from scratch, with an amount of logs to be shaped and fitted on-site. This represents a huge amount of labor and time consumption. To lay down\nthe first set of logs, and then to cut and shape the next logs to conform to the contours of the previously laid ones, all one log at a time in succession, would make the building of your home take\nup to many months to complete. With log homes kits, all of that work has already been completed for you before the materials even arrive at the building site.

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You simply lay the pre-cut, pre-shaped logs in order as marked, and... well basically, that\'s pretty much it in a nutshell. Now what would have taken months to accomplish has now become a much\nsimpler undertaking that can take just a few short weeks to finish. This is what\'s so appealing about log homes kits - simplicity, ease of construction, and speed of accomplishment. Ordering\npre-shaped log cabin kits is also much less expensive as well.

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Log home kits are generally defined as a materials package that has been pre-cut and prepared to give you all the necessary logs and materials to enable you to build a defined amount of your log\nhome. Unfortunately, there is no standard for defining the various levels of completeness among log home manufacturers. This oftentimes makes comparing the kits from manufacturer to manufacturer a\ndifficult process. The process becomes even more complicated because the differences in type and quality of materials vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

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For example, let\'s say you have kit materials lists from two different manufacturers that are identical down to the number of screws. One manufacturer\'s kit cost is 20% less than the other\'s. At\nface value it would seem the less expensive package is the better deal. But this is not necessarily the case, particularly if the lower-priced kit is comprised of green pine log and low-quality\nsingle pane windows and the other kit is made up of kiln-dried cedar logs and top of the line dual-pane windows with a 25-year warranty.

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However, as a general rule of thumb, most log home manufacturers offer some variation of three packages: log and timber shell, weather-tight shell and a complete turn-key materials package.

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