We’re here to help you choose the best maintenance plan for your log home.
Everyone knows that a $30 oil change two or three times a year beats a $2,000 mechanic’s bill or a $5,000 new engine (eek!). Similarly, creating a proper routine maintenance plan for your log home will keep it looking beautiful and help prevent unnecessary and costly repairs. In this month’s Here to Help!, we’ll walk you through a proper maintenance plan you can implement this month before the warm days of summer slip away.
(more…)
A trip to the southwest and the beauty of the Rocky Mountains were the catalysts for our log home “love affair.” We knew we would not be happy until we had one! Having a construction background, I decided to build our dream log home. That was thirty-three years ago, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Love for Log Homes
Log homes are such unique structures that working on them brings us a feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction. Nothing is more gratifying than the praise and thanks received from satisfied customers. Walking into a log home is like receiving a big warm hug from someone you love and we feel privileged to work on them, as well as live in the one we built.
(more…)
There are extreme elements, and then there is Alaska. Nowhere do high-performance products face such harsh conditions as in Alaska. Discover why Manfred Nolywaika, owner of Northwood Enterprises in Fairbanks, calls Sashco products “Alaska-tough.”
In the Beginning
Shortly after my wife and I married in 1989, we attended a log building school in Canada (kind of a different honeymoon). Six weeks later, in the dead of winter with all our possessions in the back of a pickup truck, we arrived in Alaska and established a business constructing custom handcrafted log furniture. Towards the end of the eight year life of that business, I was installing a log handrail for a customer. He asked me if I could refinish two walls of his log house. That was 1997 and my first experience refinishing logs. It was also the birth of our log home refinishing and chinking business.
The Family Business
Here I am, 17 years later. The whole family has been involved with the family business in one way or another. Running a family-operated business has allowed me to earn a living while spending time with my family, a privilege few enjoy. In fact, my oldest son, Hans, works full time with me. Hans, like his older sister before him, started out in log restoration as a little guy, pulling plastic and tape from windows, vacuuming decks, cleaning windows, etc. Since most of our work season occurs during the summer months, our kids have helped me on the job since they were very young. (Olivia actually started out in a pack on my wife’s back during our log furniture days, and has since moved on to other things.) Hans started working with me full time when he was fifteen, finally strong enough to operate a disc grinder safely. Now barely twenty, he is fully capable of handling by himself any restoration project we might take on. At a time when good help is hard to find, it’s great to have a co-worker like Hans who has the same standard of quality as I do.
Our two oldest have been a tremendous asset to the business and we are blessed with two more, Josef and Noah, who are up and coming. I am especially thankful there are aspects of this work that our son Josef, who has Downs Syndrome, can do.
(more…)
Log Home Design that Reduces Maintenance
“When it comes to log home design and maintenance principles, I have developed a few rules by which I live…Understanding this will help you sleep well at night.” What are these peace-proven principles? Our very own log home expert and Southeast Territory Rep extraordinaire, Paul Peebles shares his experience.
(more…)
Borate wood treatments are a big deal. In this month’s Experts Corner, our favorite Southeast Territory Manager, Paul Peebles, breaks down the 411 on borates.
(more…)
You’ve been livin’ the log home dream, enjoying your log cabin getaway, and definitely not thinking much about maintaining your log home stain. Then, a couple years in, you notice that the Capture® and Cascade® you used to stain your log home has lost a bit of its original lustre. Besides lost lustre, what else should you look for?
(more…)
