Good morning and welcome to our new blog series – Trade Tip Tuesdays! Each week you’ll see a new post from us with an insider tip to help your log home build go more smoothly. We’ll be covering things from all aspects of the build…including comparing companies, obtaining financing, scheduling delivery, and the actual build itself! We hope you find this series helpful and informative.

To kick things off, here’s this week’s Trade Tip: Understand what you’re getting for materials BEFORE you sign.

What’s included in your log home package?

There is a lot of variation across the log home industry as to just what “complete home package” means for a log home. For some, their log home package is just the logs…and it’s up to your contractor to source and prepare the rest. Others, like Katahdin, are more complete. For instance, our log home package includes all the materials needed to build your home above the foundation and make it weather tight. This means the subfloor, log walls, windows, doors, interior walls, second-story floors, roof, insulation and more. Our logs are also pre-cut to length and pre-drilled.

Page 1 of a sample materials list from KCLH.

Differences in what the package includes can mean big variations in your build cost, as anything that isn’t included in your package is going to be supplied and built by your GC. Therefore, it’s extremely important that you ask what is included but more importantly, what is NOT. Get a full materials list before you sign on the dotted line. And if there’s any terminology you don’t understand, ask. It could save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

We hope you enjoyed the first post of our new series. Join us next week for our next Trade Tip Tuesday!