What Are The Different Log Cabin Styles?

Log cabins have long been breaking new grounds as an enigmatic emblem of an American character. The very first log cabins were introduced in the 1600s by Scandinavians. These earliest forms of log cabins were constructed like wooden fences. Before, they use logs with different sizes set perpendicularly in a gutter to produce the walls of the cabin.

Today, log cabins are more meticulously crafted, with logs placed parallel to each other and connected on the last part with “notches.”

Log cabins have been very popular in the United States because of the amount of trees that are of great quantity. For this reason, building log cabins had been the cheapest and the most affordable homes that can easily be built by any American.

In spite of its similarities on designs and use of materials, log cabins are not created on the same level. Log cabins may vary according to the styles they were built.

Generally, there are two kinds of log cabins according to styles. To know more about this matter, here is a comprehensive and detailed explanation about the difference between the two log cabin styles:

1. Manufactured or milled log cabins

As its name suggests, manufactured log cabins use logs that are “milled” or sometimes known as “machine-profiled.”

Logs used in this particular style of log cabin have undergone through a manufacturing procedure. This is usually done to remove the inherent features of the logs as well as well as its flaws or defects. After which, these types of logs are changed into good lumbers that have proportionate sizes and shapes. Hence, you can expect that a manufactured log cabin style use only logs that are standardized and unvarying when it comes to sizes and shapes.

In this case, when building manufactured log cabins, it is important to note that the dimensions of the whole cabin are directly proportional to each other. There would not be much difficulty in identifying these things because logs are of the same sizes.

Hence, with manufactured log cabins, you can expect that the length of a certain log would naturally be the total length of one partition or fence of a log cabin.

2. Handcrafted log cabins

This particular style of log cabin is characteristically made from logs that were stripped off with their bark. However, their natural characteristics as trees were retained on its natural condition, without altering, modifying, or changing any of its features.

Handcrafted log cabins usually create an impression of a more rustic, rugged-looking cabin. This is because logs used in making this particular log cabin style have form that is more irregular.

However, with some special devices and expertise, most handcrafters would painstakingly peel off the bark from the logs and match each log into the right place to form the wall.

Since handcrafted log cabins are more laborious than manufactured log cabins, the length of time needed to finish handcrafted log cabins would be longer. What’s more, the production of handcrafted log cabins would normally costs more than the manufactured log cabins because the work is arduously made by hands only.

Handcrafted log cabins were first constructed in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Scandinavia. In fact, it was the Scandinavians that introduced log cabins to the United States.

Between these two styles of log cabins, manufactured or milled log cabins are much preferred by many people. This is because manufactured or milled log cabins are more affordable and easier to build than the handcrafted log cabins. This is because with manufactured log cabins, machines do the work; hence, the job is easily drawn to a close without much difficulty.

Moreover, manufacturers of milled logs have more skills in marketing their products and elaborating the benefits of opting for a manufactured log cabin style. In this way, more and more people are enticed to resort to manufactured log cabins than the handcrafted log cabin styles.

Whatever style you want to employ when building your log cabin, it is very worthy to note that log cabins had tremendously grown form the typical rustic kind of homes built far from the city. With the many benefits of log cabins, most of the Americans build these types of houses not just as a vacation home but more of a residential.

In fact, surveys show that many homeowners have preferred to adorn their log cabins with more embellishments making it more costly than the typical homes. That, indeed, makes log cabins definite part of the conventional type of American dwelling.