Great Articles from owning a log home, building, planning and designing to maintenance and care when you have your dream! http://coventryloghomes.com Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:50:13 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://coventryloghomes.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://coventryloghomes.com Great Articles from owning a log home, building, planning and designing to maintenance and care when you have your dream! http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/88/10059/ Coventry Log Homes has Virtual Tours! Some of our most popular log home designs are available for a real life look inside and out of our beautiful log homes. News - Latest Wed, 27 Dec 2006 10:27:45 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/138/10007/ Every day we work with individuals to design a log home that fits their family’s lifestyle. Sometimes one of our standard floorplans fits the bill, but often a custom design is needed. The easiest way to create a custom design is to find a standard floorplan that comes closest to meeting your needs. Looking through standard floorplans might spark some design ideas you can incorporate into another plan, and the pictures can help you visualize the exterior appearance of your dream home. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:05:34 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/134/10007/ When considering building a new home, take care to plan the design carefully. Placement of the home on the property will affect many decisions about the layout. Where will you enter the home? Will you have a garage now, or possibly in the future? Will a guest know where to enter? Take a blueprint of your property and place a cutout of your dream home on it. This will allow you to get an idea of placement of the main entrance into your log home. This technique can also help you determine how to best take advantage of any views — an important design factor in every home. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:55:29 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/136/10007/ They say that when you go somewhere your entrance can make or break you. Well it’s no different when it comes to your new log home. People often position their main entranceway based off of the location of their driveway or garage. However, you should take some time to plan your entryway carefully. Make sure to consider where you really will be entering the home. Homes usually have at least two entrances, but we tend to use only one door most of the time. Where is the most convenient location for this main entrance? Keep your future visitors in mind when designing the layout of your home. Will your friends and relatives who come to visit be able to find the entrance easily? Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:34:00 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/135/10007/ Answer: Running the electric in log homes is much easier than most people think. All interior wall switches and outlets are done just like a conventional home in the framed walls. To put outlets on the exterior walls, a small amount of planning needs to take place before your builder starts putting up the logs. We recommend you talk with your electrician about location and local codes. When you receive your preliminary log home plans, go over where the outlets and switches will go with your builder, and mark the decisions right on the plan. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:12:09 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/140/10007/ An Indepth Article On the Requirements and Process a Timber Goes Through to Make the GradeA visual skill to resolve technical and code compliancy issuesThe characteristics of a timber determines its grade value which defines the allowable stresses that may be imposed on the timber for quality control and assurance sake, Coventry Log Homes adheres to the strict standards set forth by the IAS (http://www.iasonline.org/) and the Log Homes Council (http://www.loghomes.org/) . The grade applied to each cant (a log which has two or more sides squared off) is based on a visual inspection of the exposed surfaces. There are many factors that can reduce the strength and integrity of a log or cant, so therefore it is important to have the wood properly dried (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_drying) to a 19% average moisture content and milled, and in the case of manufactured log homes—graded during the pre-cutting process (after the cant is planed). Here at Coventry Log Homes, the log undergoes continued inspection after subsequent cuts to determine if it is allowed to keep its grade status or be downgraded. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:34:23 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/139/10007/ Answer: No home on the market is maintenance free, and log homes are no exception. As a homeowner, you should expect to have some upkeep around your home in order to keep it in good condition. However, some types of homes require more maintenance than other — and here is where log homes have an advantage. It is quite easy to preserve your log home and keep it that way for life. Below are the steps to take toward low maintenance living.Keeping your materials in good condition throughout the building process will get you started in the right direction. Once the log home has been built and your interior is ready for finishing, we recommend sealing the interior T G walls and logs with a good quality polyurethane. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:37:13 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/137/10007/ Question: Is it easy to add onto a log home? Is it easy to add onto a log home? We hear this question all the time, especially from people considering buying a smaller home. The answer is … Yes! You can easily add on to a log home many times. We help numerous people ach year design an addition to their existing log home - even if they didn’t purchase their original home from us. Naturally, your chief concern when planning an addition should be the intention for the added space. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:42:30 +0100 http://coventryloghomes.com/content/view/133/10007/ Just the idea of owning a new log home conjures up warm thoughts in the minds of most people. The log home has long stood for a quality of life that no other home can give you. If you desire this unique lifestyle, be sure to carefully plan a budget you can live with.Once you have established a total investment amount that you are working with to build your new home, you will need to set amounts for each area of your building project. We have made a list of 16 major items to figure into your log home budget. Keeping these items in mind and sticking to them will make building your log home more enjoyable and less worrisome. Advice from the Experts - Advice from the Experts Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:14:41 +0100