www.hirsilinna.com

Vinyl siding, vinyl shingle roofing, vinyl roll flooring, vinyl ceiling tiles, vinyl sheet covered drywalls, plastic covered couches, vinyl record player and rubber chicken (what?). Now that is a formula for low cost but dull housing, unless you have all the colours of a rainbow, then we got hideous housing or ginger bread housing. Nobody wants to live in a ginger bread house, but that evil witch. Let’s take a look at something completely different.

Log walls (pine), pine wood shingle roofing, pine wood flooring, pine wood panel ceiling, pine wood panel drywalls, log stairs (pine), log railings (pine), wooden cabinets (pine), wooden doors (pine), wood frame windows (pine)… this isn’t that much different, is it? We got high cost but dull housing solution, but show some paint and rainbow colours you shall have.

That was bit harsh, wasn’t it? It is so easy to go overboard with this log dream that I often have to present some eye opening questions to my customers. If you are thinking to build a log home, no matter what everybody say, you have more options than… wood. One especially bad but common advice is that you can use textiles and other decorative items to make it your own. Please do think about materials first and after that decide on decoration. You’ll thank yourself later.

Erlund is a log home manufacturer from Finland. A family company with an interesting enough product to be featured on a fantastic TV-series Grand Designs. Erlund has developed a fascinating panel-insulation-log wall that can keep up with rising European standards for energy efficiency of housing.

HOW TO GET IN
With Erlund House, I chose a fairly simple, classic model named Taru with two entrances, one from the side of the building and one from the terrace end of the log home. Side entrance has been planned as the main entrance so let’s go in through that.

INSIDE
In front of us we have a narrow corridor that curves to the right. No cabinets or space for clothes and outdoors gear. For families with kids, I can imagine this to be congested to the max. Corridor is lined with bedrooms and a bathroom, nothing much to comment but very efficient use of space. All the rooms are simple rectangles so there are no in-built closets.

AT THE END OF THE…
Not rainbow, but corridor and it opens to combined kitchen and living room (named lounge, but in my opinion it’s not lounge quality so I’ll just call it living room). Definitive plus here is that this open area just bathes in sun light thanks to those big windows.

WHAT ELSE?
Somewhat - was that it - experience, but one can’t expect much more from house of this size. Space has been utilized fairly well, even the hall area continues all the way through the house.

However, one thing especially troubles me, the only storage room in the house has entry from kitchen only. Given the severe space limitation, this storage room is bound to turn into utility room. Awkward positioning indeed and hampers the functionality (yes, I’m from Finland and here we are all for functionality) of the floor plan.

SUMMARY
Taru floor plan makes good use of the given floor area. Floor plan is slightly on the dull side, because of straight line designing, which also keeps the floor plan clean and simple.

Storage room area is desperately needed. Bedrooms are not that big and if you have to fill them up with closets, you have very little space left for log home living.

Definite plus in this plan are two toilets and their positioning. One can access them easily. However, in order to free that much needed storage space, I would be willing to give up the toilet or rearrange the workroom and bathroom/wc combo.

Like with any floor plans, one little change here creates many little changes here and there. It is often better to redraw the whole floor plan from the start for best results.

Now to what kind of family would this house be suitable? What do you think about it?

For the longest time I have not displayed any links on this site. I’m going to start doing it again. I’ll only include sites that provide quality information on log homes, log cabins and timber frame homes. The first one that I have decided to include on the list is a personal site of a dedicated family, which is building their dream home in Kentucky.

Log home building stories are usually quite dull (I’m probably alone with this opinion), they follow the same natural storyline:

Which log is the best?
Can you recommend a good manufacturer?
What about land?
Any good contractors?
Hurrah, we are weather-locked!
Decorating!

People need something to be inspired and motivated… people get this from their peers and given the growth of the industry most of us who live in log homes have done it by buying already finished log homes or employed contractor to build one. Isn’t it just natural that we follow people who have gone the beaten track before us?

Massie house blog is something different. The scale of their undertaking is so huge that you can’t get away with it by just working hard. One has to work determined to reach one single goal. Following how they learn as they go is eye opening and I can’t recommend their website enough.