Yellowstone Traditions

Lumsden residence by Yellowstone Traditions homebuilders in Montana
Lumsden residence by Yellowstone Traditions homebuilders in Montana

We seldom profile log homes because they use so much wood. I’m making an exception for this home since it’s so spectacular. After all, it’s made of wood – a renewable natural resource. In areas where trees are still plentiful and harvested sustainably it might be practical to build a log home with locally available materials.

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Cost Breakdown of Our Recycled Wood House

View of our new recycled wood house from the front gate.
View of our new recycled wood house from the front gate.

We’ve been making steady progress on our recycled wood house and forest garden. Some of you might remember my earlier blog post about this project. The primary goal of our homestead is to become largely food self sufficient due to all the chemicals and other unhealthy things in the food supply today. A secondary goal is to have a little country house where we can hang out on weekends and days off. So far we’re fairly close to our hoped for budget even though the house grew a bit here and there (don’t they always).

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Parallel Pole Roof

Here’s another good way to build an inexpensive roof if you have access to wood poles from a forest. Like many of the ideas here on this blog, this design is for areas with few or no building codes. One way to get the wood is with a firewood permit from the forestry department/forest service. … Read more

Heart Pine

From Woodweb.com: “What is heart pine? Heart pine is the actual heartwood of the tree. Since pine used to be quite large when it was logged some hundred years ago, the pine trees were able to grow large enough to develop heartwood. Now that is not the case, as pine trees do not grow as … Read more