Hirsilinna hirsitalot ja hirsimökit

Yesterday I got mail from Honka log homes company. They had printed several successful case studies from their various business categories and now were sending them around capital area.

I can draw some interesting points from their pamphlet. First of all, they have added Timber Heart on this ad. It is there along with their other independent divisions. You might remember this post that I wrote while back.

Another thing that catches my eye is the recreation and project services. They claim that their service package includes: lot search, design, building permissions, construction, after services and local knowledge. Nice punch of claims, sure sounds nice.

This Sunday I ordered a book from Amazon UK. The book is called – The Craft of Modular Post & Beam: Building Log & Timber Homes Affordably by James Mitchell. Long title and many pages so it should make a good purchase Actually the reason why I bought the book is not the page count but terms.

You have noticed that I am no native speaker. Time and time again I struggle with English terms related to log homes and cabins. It feels quite amusing to be able to build a log home but not to be able to talk and write about them. Therefore I decided to get this title, as a reference on terminology and techniques. As soon as I get my hands on it and manage to read it through, I will post a review on these pages. Too bad mail will not arrive any faster, no matter how much I wait for it.

Homeowners Mortgage signed an exclusive deal with Southland Log Homes. With this move, Southland is trying to ramp up their service as log home market is coming increasingly competitive.

In case customer decides to make purchase from Southland, they can get almost one-stop service, so only the land to build on is missing. If you check, Southland home page now has a pre-approval process link to Homeowners Mortgage. Just check under financing and you will find it.

This is big business for both companies, because Southland customers take double the average mortgage size of 125.000 USD. I wonder how come it is so that log homes are that much more expensive.

Just as I was telling how expensive it is to build a log home, I stumble on this article on local newspaper. A new log church is being constructed in Jyväskylä MLK, Finland. Church builders use traditional log building methods to erect the church, only few tasks are done by using modern equipment. All the logs are peeled and carved with an axe!

An idea for the log church sprung up while the church decision makers were thinking ways to put their forestland into use. Instead of selling the wood for sawmills they decided to use it for the church. Also they decided to use as much community effort as possible. Now they estimate that church’s total cost will ad up to 170 000 euro. That is not bad for a log building with 84 seats.

At first their progress was slow and all offers for construction were as expensive as ready-made log building solutions would have been. Luckily they managed to find a master builder that had log home construction experience and project got going. Now they are right on schedule and the construction team of three is making good progress.

Article reveals a surprising fact – of about hundred medieval log structures in Finland, three are not churches. This shows that log manors came into picture after medieval times.