What can you do to a conventional framed home to give the outside of it that natural rustic appearance that we all so love in a traditional Log Cabin Style Home?
To begin this discussion, we need to throw in one important piece of information here. Sometimes the all-out Log Cabin Style Look may not be appropriate for your neighborhood or setting.
Ouch! Maybe that's not something that you wanted to consider, but we bring it up here because it is a very real factor in determining how to reach your rustic goals for your home.
With that being said don't forget that there are several other rustic finishes that are common;y used on the exterior of cabins and might be of good use to you to consider. Sometimes a particular location may lean more towards the log style, but don't forget that many cabins are also built out of stone or sided with cedar shakes or several other different finishes, including simply being painted in rustic colors.
So before making a final commitment to an exterior game-plan, please consider all of the information that we offer in this article.
Where To Begin?
Well one option, and probably the most expensive one is to go find a log mill and have them mill you up some real logs that are cut in half lengthwise so that they can be fastened to the outside of your framing. They can leave the last foot or so of each log fully round so that you can still have the stacked Lincoln log effect on the corners. By doing this you can get all of the look and feel benefits of a real Log Cabin but still retain the benefits of a conventional framed home.
While this would give you the style of home closest to the real thing, it brings with it a few drawbacks too, the first being expense and the second being the shear weight of the siding itself. A third might be that unlike any other type of siding, you are going to have to plan for and deal with the settling characteristics of real logs and their tendencies to pinch doors and windows and things like that.
So are we discouraging you from this style of home? No, not at all! In fact if we were building from the ground up and wanted all of the benefits and beauty of a real log cabin, but wanted to avoid some of the pitfalls that come with them, oh and had the budget for it, this is the way we would choose to build our home.
However, and this for us is a rather big "however", there are several reasons that we are going to recommend other approaches here. Any and all of these, including the half log approach that we just described, are viable and beautiful options. Just be aware that each one also has its own pros and cons. We will attempt to discuss those here as we describe each potential style.
Rustic and Log Cabin Style Siding and Exterior Finishes
Let's consider some of the thoughts that should factor into your decision on what type of exterior finish to use on your home to bring about the transformation to a Log Cabin Style home.
The first question to consider is, do I actually want the look of a log cabin on the exterior of my home, or do I really want to confine my Log Cabin Style decorating to the inside only?
What? You may wonder why we would even pose that question on this website? There are two very big and very relevant reasons for doing so that really should be considered.
First, would the Log Cabin Style look even fit in well with the surroundings and setting of my home?
The second BIG question should be, am I aware of how much maintenance is required to keep a real wood exterior looking nice and am I willing to commit the time and financial resources to doing this over the long haul?
Both of these things need to be seriously considered and honestly answered before you make the choice of how to go about finishing the outside of your home.
For us, the maintenance question is the absolute biggest one that has deterred us from going with the real wood look on the outside of our own home. No matter how much we like the look of real logs and trim on the outside, we don't want to spend the time and money to keep them looking nice on a frequent basis. When our house is finished, we don't want to ever have to mess with it again if we can avoid it. That led us to look for other ways to achieve that rustic look that we wanted.
Now some of you will take an objective look at those questions and decide that, yes, that look would be appropriate for my location and I do understand what it takes to maintain the finish on exterior wood. I am willing to pay the price because I really enjoy the look and feel of real wood on the exterior of my home. We think that then it becomes a great decision for you!
Maintenance Of Natural Wood On The Exterior Of A Home
We only bring this up because we have found that some people jump into these decisions without being fully informed and 3-5 years down the road they get hijacked by the desperate need to either pay someone a considerable amount of money to refinish their home or the need to spend several weekends doing it themselves. Sometimes the dawning realization that this is going to be repeated every 3-5 years for as long as they own the home, begins to sour the enjoyment of the Log Cabin Style Home Dream that they had worked so hard to realize. It is not uncommon to find these homes on the real estate market after a few years of this experience. That is why we want to discuss it here.
Realistically, in order to keep exterior wood looking nice and to prevent its decay over the long haul, you will need to refinish it every 3-5 years and sometimes even as often as every 2 years depending upon your environment. While some people will argue that if you use the right finishes, they will last much longer, our experience doesn't necessarily bear that out.
As of this writing, we don't have any particular product that we would suggest using. But our basic guidelines would go something like this. Find a paint specialty store rather than your generic box store and ask them for their recommendations. Choose their best product rather than their cheapest one and you might add 50% to the life of each restaining interval.
We highly recommend using a stain instead of a paint and brushing it on instead of spraying it on. You will double the maintenance interval if you will brush the finish on instead of spraying it on. Plus it protects the wood better. Brushing actually pushes more of the stain down into the cracks and pores of the wood, where as spraying just fogs a relatively light coat of it onto the very outside fibers of the wood. Yes, spraying is much faster, but the trade-off is honestly not worth it over time.
Here you are going to begin asking the question. Do you mean that I need to paint the entire exterior of my home with a 6 inch wide paint brush? Won't that take me forever?
Yes on both counts! That is why maintaining your home properly requires some commitment and why we need to have this discussion.
Ten plus years ago, let's say around 2010, we were getting anywhere from $5-10K to restain the exterior of a home depending on the size, and that was relatively inexpensive back then. Imagine what that will have grown to now and continue to escalate to in the future!
What we have discussed so far are just the basics of staying on top of keeping your wood exterior looking fresh and attractive. We have not even mentioned what you have to do to correct a deterioration problem if it gets ahead of you in this maintenance curve. Suffice it to say that if either the UV rays or the moisture begin to affect the appearance or integrity of the underlying wood itself, your restoration process will become much more time and money intensive.
So with all of this being said, should you use real wood on the exterior of your home? It sounds like we may be saying no to that question. But that is not the case. What we are saying is that you need to consider all of the factors involved and then ask yourself honestly if you love the wood look enough to dedicate the time and funds to keep it looking nice and attractive? If your honest answer is yes, then, by all means, go for it!
Because so many people really do want the look of real wood and are willing to pay that price, we are going to share several approaches to accomplish that end here as well as several rustic looking approaches that are relatively maintenance free too.
As we drive around many neighborhoods out here in the west, it is not uncommon to run across older, owner-built log cabins that, because of these very factors have been neglected and now are looking old, gray, weathered and run down. This is what we are trying to help you avoid if we can. Don't put all of your blood, sweat and tears into the dream of having a beautiful Log Cabin Style Home, only to find that 10 years later, it ends up looking ratty and neglected and the dream is gone.
If you know that you won't realistically want to or be able to spend the time of money down the road to keep up with the maintenance, then consider some of the other options that we suggest. Over the long haul, you will be much happier with your decision.
So What Are Your Options?
Let's begin with the most expensive and difficult and work our way down to the more practical and conservative.
Probably the most expensive and most difficult way to go about giving your existing home a Log Cabin Style Exterior look and feel would be the previously mentioned, milled half logs. While this can be done, it really doesn't make much sense for the average home because it requires so much specialized knowledge as well as skills and adaptations to really make it work well. For the average home owner/handyman, this is probably more of a job than you want to dive into. Our suggestion would be that if you are set on this look, to definitely hire a contractor with experience in this area.
Which is why we won't spend much time discussing it here.
The next option would probably be to use a style of log siding that mimics a squared-off log. This siding is usually a plank that is about 2-3 inches thick and has beveled edges on it that work well with log chinking. Again, we don't have any personal experience with this style of siding but have seen it applied to several high end cabins with very attractive results.
Most Common Approach
Probably the most common approach to giving your framed home that rustic Log Cabin Style Look is to use standard milled log siding. This is basically a 2X6 that has been milled to resemble a rounded side of a log. It has a tongue on the top edge that slips under a groove on the bottom edge much like ship lap siding.
The advantage here is that every board is uniformly shaped and is relatively simple to install.
Sometimes we have seen it installed with the outside corners mitered into each other with no trim. In our opinion this approach looks much too formal for a Log Cabin Style Home and actually ends up not looking great over time as the wood shrinks and the two sides pull away from each other.
Our preference and the one that we feel like gives the best results over the long haul is to trim the outside corners with two vertical 2X6's, one over-lapping the other to form an "L" shaped corner. On the inside corners, simply nail a vertical 2X2 into the corner. Now cut your siding with simple squared ends and butt it into the sides of your vertical trim pieces on each wall.
You will still get some shrinkage and the ends of your siding may pull away from the vertical trim, but the end result will look much better than the mitered version.
Any place that you have an exterior light fixture, outlet box, water hydrant or other penetration of the siding, you may want to consider making a bezel or mounting surface for it out of flat 2X6 or larger material to give yourself a more stable and attractive installation. Build and mount the surround first and then install your siding around it, butting up to it just like on the corners.
By the way, it is always a good idea to install a house wrap-style vapor and moisture barrier on your walls before applying the siding.
Our Favorite Siding Style - A Combination
When we were building Log Cabin Style Homes to sell to the public, we developed a sort of hybrid style of siding that we feel gave us a very attractive style of exterior for our homes that seemed to appeal well to our buyers.
Instead of covering the entire exterior of the home with the previously described log siding, we used it on about the bottom 4 feet of the walls and then transitioned to a vertical T-111 style cedar panel siding for the rest of the way up to the eaves.
This had the effect of breaking up the overly milled, and somewhat artificial look of the log siding while still using it to establish the look and feel that we were after. One of the things that we don't like about this type of log siding is that if you cover the entire wall with it, the look is too uniform and actually seems to move away from the rustic look that we are after.
By using the two different types of siding together, we established the rustic look with the Log Cabin Style Siding and gave the exterior a little more contrast and texture variation with the T-111 plus we actually saved some money too. Always a good combination in our opinion.
Another option here to give a similar look but with a step up in materials would be to use a vertical board and batten style of cedar siding in place of the T-111. Again it would give you another degree of texture and contrast.
Some of the more expensive cabins that we have seen actually used this board and batten style of siding on the entire home. It accepts stain well and gives a very nice and rustic looking alternative to logs or log-look siding.
Maintenance Free
Most of us really have no desire to spend our spare time, after a hard day's work or our valuable weekends doing something as mundane as the maintenance on our homes. Now we understand that for some people, that kind of physical work is a welcome outlet from the daily grind of what we do. But most of us would probably much prefer to do something more enjoyable than staining the entire outside of our house with a paintbrush.
There are actually a couple of maintenance free alternatives for the exterior finish on your rustic home. However, we have found both to be either "love it" or "hate it" solutions.
First there is Log Cabin Style Vinyl or Steel Log Siding. This is basically the same exact product as standard vinyl or steel siding except that it is shaped like a log. It also has a Styrofoam backing to give it some rigidity. The pros of this product are it's ease of installation and its maintenance free nature.
The cons would be that you need to be careful about which color you choose. Some of the colors are quite realistic, others give you the feel that you have just created a very nice"plastic" log house! To avoid this outcome, make sure that you find a home that has been done in the color that you are looking at. Spend some time looking at it to see if it fits well with your vision for your own home.
A second con could be that you end up with the same effect as using the real log siding that we discussed earlier on the entire house instead of breaking it up. Because of the manufactured nature of both products, you can end up with the entire project looking too uniform rather than having the variations common to a rustic Log Cabin Style Home.
These are not terrible obstacles to overcome, but rather represent some areas for creative thinking to produce a truly beautiful outcome. In fact, one of our suggestions would be to combine this product with the next one that we will recommend in a similar way to what we described earlier with the real wood products.
So the next product on the maintenance free list would be the vinyl siding that mimics cedar shakes. This stuff is a truly impressive creation. We have not seen any of it that looks "plastic" in its appearance. In fact without a very close examination, it is very difficult to tell the difference from the genuine article.
However, and this is a big however, this siding is not a true Log Cabin Style product and it doesn't appeal to everyone. It is however, definitely a rustic style of product and cabins do incorporate cedar shakes either on parts of them for an accent or on the entire exterior of their walls as the main siding material. If you like this look, it might actually be more in keeping with your surroundings than a log-look siding in some settings.
Our personal recommendation for a truly maintenance free yet rustic looking exterior would be a combination of the two styles of siding. Maybe use the log siding for the first four feet and then continue the rest of the way to the top with the cedar shake style siding. Or maybe you could use the shake siding to cover the entire wall on a few accent areas such as a pop out area or around an entry way or visa versa.
Rustic-Ish, But Not Log Cabin Style
What??? Why include this here?
Because sometimes we need to have another option for one reason or another. Sometimes going full-on Log Cabin Style just doesn't fit your neighborhood or setting, but you do want to do something that leans towards rustic with the outside of your home.
If you fall into that category, here are some options that can still make your house feel more rustically homey than most.
If you need to use vinyl or steel siding but don't want to go for the full log look, then spend some time exploring the standard colors of conventional siding. We ended up doing our own home in a darker tan colored vinyl and then using a green metal roof as well as green shutters and a green painted front door for accent. While not anywhere close to looking like a Log Cabin, it did accomplish our goals and it kept us within our budget as well as being totally maintenance free.
Since we did ours , the siding companies have come out with many more rustic and natural wood colors in their line ups. Explore these options. Also don't forget the cedar shake style of vinyl. It works good for either accent areas in combination with vinyl ship lap style or on the entire body of the house.
Your exterior accent and trim pieces can go a long ways towards adding a more rustic feel to the exterior of your home without getting into adding real wood to the outside.
But also don't rule out using some real wooden posts or beams or other trim in appropriate areas. Just remember all of our discussion about maintenance and upkeep before you make that choice.
Stone
One last area to consider before we end this discussion is the use of natural stone on the exterior of your home. Natural stone is every bit as much of a Cabin Style building material as logs. In some areas of the country, it is even more common. So if the log look doesn't fit your neighborhood or your building goals, and your budget allows, consider using natural stone either for the main body or as an accent material in appropriate places.
Avoid the cut stone look and go with natural looking rock. Again this would be a good place to explore all of the man-made, cultured stone options. They are much more easy to install and less expensive to add to an existing home that to use actual stone masonry.
In Conclusion
So what to do about the exterior of your home? Do you go for the real Log Cabin Style look or something that only leans that way? Really that answer is going to be completely up to you.
However, remember to consider the big questions that we have discussed here.
Are you willing to dedicate the time and resources necessary to keep natural wood looking nice when exposed to the elements?
Does the Log Cabin Style Look actually fit in and look appropriate in your particular neighborhood and setting?
If not, would some other equally rustic looking style be more appropriate?
Lastly, what does my budget allow?
When you have clear answers to these questions then you can move down the correct path with your home. We hope that the information and ideas that we have offered here will help you to come to a conclusion that will bring long term enjoyment to you and your family!
Have a great day!