My wife and I started our crusade to find that special builder in 1988. We first checked close to home within about a 400 mile radius. In between trips we started our collection of log home magazines, brochures and builders guides. This would be helpful in locating and planning our next trip to builders further away. Is this starting to sound familiar? In 1989 we took an extended trip visiting five states and Canada. We viewed big logs, small logs, and every kind of notch that you can name. We had visited the B Allen Mackie School in Canada which was closed but the caretaker gave us the grand tour and we were able to view various notches and building techniques. We visited builders that were warm and friendly and others that were totallty indifferent. On one visit to a builders yard, my wife and I were greeted as we entered the model log home. We were seated at a nice desk and proceeded to discuss our log home plans with a representative and his associate. We had barely rolled out our 3 view drawings on the desk when in walks two well know television stars. Both representatives got up from the desk and left us sitting there in total disbelief. We patiently waited and waited and finally left when no one returned to acknowledge our presence. It has been 8 years now and they have no clue that we ever existed. Our quest to find a builder continued and in March of l990 I retired and sold our home and business. Our new property was located in Oregon along the Umpqua River so we stored all our furniture nearby. With our truck camper loaded and our tow vehicle secured, we loaded up our Dobie and our cat and proceeded to a campground in Oregon. This would now be our home and we would now be known as full-timers in the camping world. We had moved out of a 5 bedroom home on 3 acres into a camper mounted on a truck with a dimension of 8' x 11'. And don't forget the dog and cat. We surely had plenty of time now to locate that just right builder, or so we thought. The days became weeks which turned into months. I finally made ten copies of my 3 view drawings and purchased 10 large mailing envelopes and enough stamps to mail them. We poured over the builders we thought would do the best job, looking through all the brochures, magazines and trying to recall our on site visits. After selecting the 10 builders and mailing off our envelopes we waited. One by one our requests were answered. With nine down and one left to go, we still hadn't made a decision. All the answers till now had been returned with quotes, brochures, letters and all in big envelopes. When the final quote arrived it came in a business envelope with just a letter. And guess what, its the one I felt I might want to go with. I opened the envelope and read the letter. The letter stated that since they were located quite a distance from our homesite that we might do better buying close to home and also be able to save on the transportation costs. After all we were in Oregon and they were in Ontario, Canada. Not to be denied, I made a personal call direct to the builder and again asked for a quote on my drawings and a brochure. My wife and I had agreed to keep our home simple with a rectangular shape, single story and with a front porch. Our home would be built from round logs and be handcrafted. The envelope arrived and this time contained a brochure and a quote sheet attached with the approximate cost of our home delivered to Oregon. The price was competitive with all the other quotes. The enclosed brochure also contained a home that was built for another client and both my wife and I fell in love with it. I made that fateful second call to find out how much this other home in the brochure would cost to build and the rest is history.

I guess you might say that we broke all the rules for buying a log home. As things turned out we couldn't be more satisfied. About the only thing that resembles our original log home plans is that our new home is also handcrafted. We now have square logs with dove tails instead of round logs, porches that wrap around the entire home instead of on one side, 3 stories including the basement instead of a single story and finally a great timber framed roof system. A work of art that came from the other side of the world and ended up costing us less than we could ever have imagined.