After weeks of short days and cold weather, the urge to get outside builds until it has to be answered. For log home owners, the answer usually starts with the outdoor spaces: decks, covered porches, hot tubs, and outdoor fireplaces that turn the yard into a second living floor. Home tours from Colorado to New […]
Landscaping adds living elements to a property: plants, trees, flowers, and shrubs. Hardscaping brings the manmade side: concrete pavers, brick, gravel, fountains, and wooden beams or planks. The two approaches work best as partners, and a gravel path winding through a flower bed shows how the blend reads as one design. Before you move soil
Birds bring song and movement to a property, but they also peck at logs, nest under eaves, and leave droppings that hold moisture against the wood. A log wall has no siding to sacrifice; moisture that sits on the surface works into checks and joints over time. The ventilated wall cavities that protect framed houses
Part of the appeal of outdoor living is the connection to the weather: the sound of a waterfall, the smell of the grill, the long light of a summer evening. An outdoor kitchen turns that connection into a working room, with covered cooking and dining zones, a fire pit for the off-season, and a hot
Outdoor living is an integral part of the log and timber lifestyle. Porches, patios, and decks extend the home’s living space into the yard, and the best examples blur the line between indoors and out until the boundary almost disappears. For many owners the center of that outdoor room is the cooking area, and planning,
The log home fantasy usually stops at the front door: exposed beams, vaulted ceilings, a stone fireplace. The outdoor space gets less attention, yet for owners who actually live in the house, the yard is where the lifestyle happens. Creating a dedicated outdoor sanctuary does not require landscaping the whole property. A small portion of
A fence does more than mark where a property ends. Around a cabin or log home, it frames the yard, contains pets, screens wind, and turns a plain boundary into part of the setting. The poet Robert Frost observed that good fences make good neighbors, but he also asked what a wall is walling in
No good landscape job is complete without some hard, non-living materials to provide contrast. Even simple boulders make natural elements more vibrant. Hardscaping covers every non-living feature in the yard: tile, stone, concrete, and metal surfaces that sit alongside the plantings. A balanced landscape mixes these hard elements with soft plantings so neither one dominates.
Building near a body of water is a natural draw for log home owners, but the way the site is prepared decides whether the water stays healthy. Many builders and landscapers take a clear-everything approach, removing every tree and shrub before construction. On a shoreline that strategy is hazardous to the ecosystem and is now
For many people, surrounding yourself with nature is what sets log home living apart, from the timbers that make up the house to the woodlands and gardens outside. A conventional aqua-blue concrete pool often does not fit that vision, no matter how enjoyable it would be. A swimming pond that emulates the lakes and streams
