Some Interesting Finishing Puzzles...


Hats off to our finishing carpenters! Every day there are new puzzles to solve, some of them taking hours to complete. Some of them take days of consideration before a reasonable plan of attack is agreed upon. Sometimes we try something by tacking up the modification and 'living with it' for a day or so before we can make up our minds whether it works or not.

As homeowners, we are very much a part of this process, as it should be. We are, after all, the ones who have to live with the outcome.

Sharpen you observational skills, because you are going to need them when building a log home. Stick houses are so much easier...and (Dr. Ellen says we are biased)...more boring. These problem-solving kinds of things can be fun!


This problem arises from a sloppy log dry-in...the gluelam was not measured precisely, resulting in the gaping hole you see above. We still haven't come up with a strategy that pleases us but when we do we will show you our fix.


Here is another dry-in problem...the horizontal beam above was not measured properly for the required notch. The notch cut was way too large. Not only that, but it was just FILLED IN with a hastily inserted nail which only makes the matter worse. It takes ingenuity to solve a problem like this with so many intersecting beams. But more on that soon...


All log home packages may do this, but certainly Barna does. Each log comes labeled with an ID stapled into the end of the log, which is fine. What is not fine is that the dry-in guys re-labeled many logs with a felt marking pen (duh). These, in turn, have to be sanded several times, adding unecessary steps to the finishing process.

This is done by folks who have no idea of the mess it makes down the road for finishing carpenters. ALL of these kinds of things can be fixed...but at considerable cost to the homeowner.

Dr. Ellen wonders if there are any dry-in guys out there who understand the finishing demands of their sometimes painful indiscretions...beware the ONE MAN DRY-IN SHOW. What you want are team players.


The electricians presented this problem. In haste they laid electrical wire on the outside of the logs, instead of using one of their fancy-dancy flexible drill bits to do the harder thing, which is to drill down the interior of the logs where the wires belong. Darryl is having to chip out a channel for the wires to go which, thankfully, will be hidden behind a custom cabinet. But still...this is hardly professional, eh?


Our expert flooring guys discuss with Wayne, our site supervisor, how to handle the interface of the hardwood flooring with the stairs...which will be done by someone else. There has to be a seamless transition from the hardwood flooring pattern to the bullnose or it will not look right. But we figured it out!


The bottom flight of stairs at the garage level of the house leave a pretty substantial empty space under them. So we drywalled that space and added electrical lines, and even a smaller door into a second space (also with lights). Who knows what might be stored here but not to worry...that space will one day become utterly essential and you will wonder how you ever survived without it.


Oh, this is a fun one. The electricians originally put plugs and light switches where we generally asked for them...but it didn't take long for us to realize, once the custom kitchen cabinets were installed, that they were wrongly placed. This is, of course, an ADD-ON to the original bid but we had plans for that intra-cabinet space and those outlets had to go. See the four electrical squares above?


We had them moved up under the upper cupboards to give us as much space as possible between the cupboards and the countertop. It was not easy, making this change, as some junction boxes had to be added, but the result was top-knotch. Wheh!



We had to do this on both kitchen walls. Here you can see how far up the outlets were moved. Those empty spaces will be filled in with drywall and Dr. Ellen will get her space back for her custom kitchen tiles.


Another discussion ensued about the interface between the bathtub wall and the ceiling. Here Lesley suggests options, which included making the tongue and groove ceiling 'float' which was not done in the first palce. Also, the board at her left hand needs to be finished more eloquently.

Keep your eyes peeled, these kinds of things easily escape attention.


This is a view of the top of the door leading into the elevator on the third floor. Because the lift is located up here, a small trap door had to be cut into the tongue and groove above the door so that a man can get into the area to do repairs if necessary. So this was the solution which is pretty ingenious...once painted with polyeurathane, you will hardly know that a trap door is there.


Also, the elevator shaft was totally drywalled, but spaces had to be cut into the drywall to accommodate potential shifts in the log structure. Some raw drywall edges were the result, so we had to have the elevator guys back to raise and lower the elevator while Darryl finished those spaces. Now, no raw spaces are visible when you are entering and exiting floors. Who would have guessed?


This puzzle is not uncommon in a log home like ours...the logs necessarily extend out beyond the wall at certain junctures. At this particular juncture, however, the protruding logs cut into the 42-inch width of the stairwell, so Brandon had to saw the logs off and then sand them for painting. NOT AN EASY FIX but a necessary one. Even though we have an elevator, the stair width of 42-inches needs to be maintained for ease of moving furniture from floor to floor.


This is one of those dumb things that didn't have to happen. An installer needed to sand the far right strip of wood so that this vanity could would fit properly. Instead, he sanded an excessively wide swatch, which must now be polyeurathaned to protect against moisture. This vanity will be in a bathroom. The side show (above) will not be seen, as it fits against a log wall - however - the sanding exposes the surface to moisture contamination. Do you suppose he said anything about that? NOT. Lesley discovered it and had time to polyeurathane it before it was permanently installed.



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