[.ca] Small Log Homes: Storybook Plans (ISBN 1586850431)

Affordable and attainable log homes:
This book is for the log home dreamers and offers affordable and attainable log home plans. These are not your multi million dollar mansions featured in popular log home magazines but homes that can and are built for the average homeowner with a desire to live in a log home. Very interesting book with information on chosing a plan for a log home as well as plans that can be purchased.

Concise, to the point:
A good, usable well-illustrated book for the everyday person..the middle class "dreamer". Not focused on millionare showplaces, but homes for the average family, homes under 2500 sq ft. Cozy photos and a nice selection of floor plans. A good working tool if you are considering a log home in your future.

Just pictures and a few undetailed floor plans:
The pictures are beautiful, and there are a few floorplans at the back. The text however is useless, unless you need to be told that putting in lots of options will raise the price, create the floorplan based on your family's interests and that you shouldn't spend more than you can afford. It really isn't anything more than you could get with a 10 minutes trip to the website of a log home manufacturer, except that it has much less info! It tells you, for example, that you should make careful and deliberate use of all the space by planning it carefully, but does not show examples of good planning, give you thought provoking questions to ask yourself, or anything that could help you do it. The book mentions that there are 2 types of log cabins, names them and gives a few uncaptioned photographs, without even one word to tell you what the advantages of one over the other might be. It tells you that a complicated roof is more expensive than an uncomplicated one. Did you need to be told? It does not tell you what the choices are in roof styles, the advantages and weather reasons you might want one more than the other, dispite the cost, and it certainly does not tell you what the price differences are (even an approx % difference would have been a start). It does not suggest anything useful and should only be bought by someone who is on their way to the log home manufacturer in their area so that they can point to the pictures in the book and facilitate the teaching the company will then have to provide. This is for a person buying a finished, installed product, not building a home. I was very disappointed and would never have bought this book if I had seen it in a bookstore. It is meant for someone who buys magazines exclusively for the pictures and does not read the articles. This will not help you build a house.

Log Cabin Storybook:
This book is aptly second titled a "storybook" - it is the stuff of fantasies - far removed from today's "cut and stack" modern log cabin building. The pictures and design ideas are beautiful. Well worth the time and money. A must read for small log cabin would-be owners.