Hello World! Welcome Friends! If you’ve been a homeowner or lived with one, then you know at some point the cost of that home can add up. The older a home gets, the more serious issues occur that need to be repaired. Ideally, regular maintenance can help avoid or lower some of these costs, but maintenance has an ongoing price as well. Everything from cleaning to repainting to outright replacement adds up. Alternatively, one could consider a log cabin as an alternate option, and the cost of maintaining a cabin is going to be markedly lower than that of a standard home.
Quintessential Log Home Maintenance
The first major maintenance issue of a log cabin involves the protection of the wood exterior. While it is possible for a log cabin to be painted, the natural look of the wood tends to be the trend and approach. That means that the wood itself then needs to be treated with repellant. Otherwise, it will soak up moisture. Even ambient humidity can cause warping and swelling of unprotected wood. Secondly, pets will attack bare wood. There are plenty of bugs, as well as birds, that will try to penetrate the wood for food, shelter, and use for their own purposes. Again, regular application of sealant and barrier protection makes a difference, extending the life of the wood surface.
Exterior protection involves three big activities: inspection, washing, and treatment. The first one generally involves just time if you know what to look for. The cleaning does require materials. A typical wash and wood restorer stain will run something near $150 per 5 gallons. Since a treatment generally involves two washes per treatment, $300 is more likely per session, twice a year ($600 total). Definitely avoid power-spraying as that strips wood.
Sealing blocks up any potential gaps that appear over time. This comes from expansion and drying out. Sealants should be applied annually, and 5 gallons typically cost around $250 to $300.
Once clean, re-staining helps protect the wood from sunlight damage and weathering. A good oil stain is going to run about 35 gallons of stain which typically totals about $2,300. This is applied every three years, so it’s not an annual hit, but there is a periodic expense.
Your log cabin depends on the roofing and gutters to work well, shucking away water instead of letting it pool on the cabin. Gutter cleaning is essential and should be applied annually if not more frequently. Most of the cost is time, but you may need to rent some equipment for a few $100 for the work if extensive.
Internal Gapping
Areas around the doors, windows, vents, and similar tend to show gaps over time as the wood shape expands and contracts in log cabin kits. These are locations where you want to look for space and fill it up with a gap sealant. A simple can of pressure foam does the trick, especially since it expands inside the gap space. A cabin worth of gap sealant will run about $75 and should be applied annually based on inspection. Similar sealants around windows can be applied with caulking, weather stripping and similar, costing about $200 annually.
Dollar for dollar, cabins are cheaper than standard home repair, but both need maintenance to avoid bigger costs later from neglect.
Click the links below for any posts you have missed:
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