Log Homes Made Easy: Contracting and Building Your Own Log Home

by Jim Cooper

Overview

Third edition of the best-selling guide to building log homes. Explores the myths and realities of log home construction, with tips on choosing an architect, planning the site, controlling costs, and more. Includes detailed diagrams and additional resources for getting started.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811745208
Publisher:	Stackpole Books
Publication date:	03/20/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jim Cooper has been a general contractor and builder of log homes for more than twenty years. He is owner of Three Creeks Interactive, Inc., an Internet company developing interactive products for prospective buyers and the housing industry.

Editorial Reviews

As an experienced builder, Cooper is a strong proponent of log homes even while he debunks some of the myths associated with them (e.g., their rusticity makes them inexpensive and easy to build). Instead, as Cooper suggests, they are products of modern engineering and building methods, and their rustic ambience comes at a hefty price. Still, they occupy a solid niche in the home construction market. For enthusiasts and would-be inhabitants of log homes, Cooper provides concise and sensible information on shopping for kit homes, selecting and preparing suitable land, estimating construction costs, securing financing (sometimes tricky with log homes), and overseeing construction. Numerous well-conceived checklists and forms complete this solid guide for the owner/contractor. Recommended for most public libraries.-- Bill Demo, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll., Dryden, N.Y.

Library Journal

If log homes were in fact cheaper than conventional structures, Cooper logically observes, then subdivisions of raw timber rather than planed boards would dot the landscape. The rustic domicile costs about 15 percent more than its civilized alternative, and to save starry-eyed utopians from the grief of finding that out themselves, the author has written this eminently sensible guide. Experienced with the incompetence of do-it-yourselfers, he recommends the builder take on the role of general contractor instead--hiring an architect and buying materials in kit form. Then he clarifies the processes of buying a lot and of subcontracting such tasks as laying the foundation, framing, roofing, and installing the amenities no self-respecting cabin should be without: heating, cooling, plumbing, and electricity. Sample contracts and reading resources round out a work that usefully informs casual dreamers about the concrete realities of cabins.

Gilbert Taylor