Have you ever dreamed... of a place where peaceful sunny days pass like the whisper of a cool breeze across a shady porch and the whippoorwill welcomes the stillness of every summers’ eve? A place where the soulful howl of a solitary red wolf glides through the early morning silence of the holler so perfectly that you wonder if you really heard it at all. Or an evening dusting of snow settles so quietly that your first clue as you move to the bright kitchen window for that first comforting cup of morning coffee is the spectacular view before you.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a log cabin notched by hand like your Grandparents did five or six generations ago? When survival was paramount to the thought of ever assembling any sort of inheritance.

I have. I wondered what it would be like to notch up a log cabin and set the logs by hand in a place where the trees have lived for centuries, where the wildlife can “just be themselves” and the birds and squirrels have only a skeptic curiosity about their neighbors. I wondered what it would be like to live with the trickle of a cool running spring and to learn the land and the flora by touch and by name. To collect fresh water cress and wild mushrooms in the lust green timber of spring and pick sun sweetened summer blackberries as big as a farmers thumb and gather nuts in the brilliance of the Ozarks’ fall. I wanted to live simple and comfortable and become so close to the land that the native Americans would say “.. the wind knows your name”.

Ok, maybe I was having a mid-life thing. I felt burned out. Life felt like a treadmill going a little bit faster every day. There had to be a larger purpose. Our contracting business didn’t feel like a purpose for living. It felt more like a means to stay alive. I wanted to make a difference somehow. I wanted to make a giant footprint somewhere. So we sold out everything and did it. I thought it would take a couple of years. It took about eight!

I’m Duke Warriner. My wife Levon and I actually did it together. I’m sure I couldn’t have done it without her. She has the grit and determination and the quiet acceptance that was and is required of all pioneering people. Besides being the person holding the other end of virtually everything, she provided balance, tolerance and realism, a ton of patience and not unlike the birds and squirrels, “ a skeptic curiosity” although weighted and not infrequently I must say more so to the former than the later. But she never once doubted my ability or determination to do it. She should be Sainted.

Our search for property began probably in the mid 90’s and ultimately culminated in the fall of 1997 when we purchased +/- 125 acres of the closest thing to a utopian spring fed, tall timbered holler that the Ozarks could produce.

During our extended search for property we spent many weekends visiting restored and relocated settlements of early logs structures and some privately restored and unrestored log homes and barns. We even resurrected an 1860’s log cabin hidden in the walls of a farmhouse in Wisconsin. I spent many hours studying and photographing the way these old log structures were notched and set and probably as many hours reading and talking to people who actually had first hand knowledge of the process. Believe me when I say there are very few people like that still around. When you find one you glean every tidbit of information you can from them and ask every question you can think of, (until they ask you to quit bothering them.)

Our 1500sq. ft. log cabin is located in the bottom of a holler, down a winding 7/10 of a mile long driveway off of State highway N in the very rural South central Douglas County community of Squires, Missouri. I mentioned the driveway to give you an understanding of the broad smile I got from the bull dozer operator when I told him what we wanted to do.

We began the first clearing of the site in December of 1997. We cut and dragged and burned many brush piles that winter. We also gathered many varieties of the local wild flower seeds and sowed them all around. Incidentally, they now provide the most idyllic scene just off the front porch.

We needed a place to live while the house was being built so I first built a 42’x 21’ timber frame and log guest house which also includes the two car garage. In October of 1998 the utility right-of-way was logged and cleared. We moved into our cozy one room digs in January of 1999.

Keep in mind that my “dream” required that I (we) do all the work ourselves with only rough sawn “saw mill” lumber and whatever means we could devise. We did use power whenever we could but all of the timber framing, log notching and assembly was done completely by hand. All timber inleting and log notching was done by saw, wood chisel and broad hatchet. No commercial “lumber” was ever used on this site. All materials were rough sawn at the nearest sawmill and stacked (& stacked & stacked) and dried right here on the site. A crane was used to “fly” the roof trusses because they were 36’ long and 16’ tall and weighed about 600 pounds each. They were handmade of full dimension 2”x 8” southern yellow pine from the surrounding area. If you ever plan to build with rough sawn air dried lumber, do yourself a favor and talk to someone who has. It is definitely not like its kiln dried cousin. It used to be the only way it was done and there are several things you can do to make your work easier and your quality as good as any.

The two buildings together contain about 130 white oak logs, 10’ to 12’ in length and each weighing 300 to 400 pounds. They were all hoisted by hand. No “A” frame or winch was used. The notching of the wall logs required approximately 650 separate cuts to complete. Wire lathe strips 4inches wide were tacked into the grooving between the logs so the chinking material would adhere and not crack. 2800 ft of the 4inch wire strips had to be cut and placed. Over 3000 board feet of southern yellow pine boards were air dried for one year and planed for use as wall and ceiling coverings and door construction, no drywall was used anywhere. The ceiling and trim for the shower in the master bath is eastern red cedar laid in a herringbone pattern and well sealed so no tile was needed. The loft bathroom is lined throughout with wainscoted bead board and finished with old fashioned milk paint. I love the look and free or real wood and the milk paint lets the wood’s grain show through. The free standing leg bathtub and fixtures in the loft bathroom are all restored originals not replicas. We estimate our labor investment to date to be between 8000 and 10,000 hours.

We poured the basement of the house in June of 1999. It took most of the summer to deck the basement and build the trusses. The large size of the trusses was necessary because of the 6’ and 8’ porch overhangs. The door and window bucks were made and readied and we began to notch logs in October of 1999. We took a break to go deer hunting in November. Upon returning to work on more log notching I fell into the basement stairwell (no stairs yet) and dislocated my shoulder. Boy was that basement floor hard! By the time we got back to the logs it was January. The first thing we did was to build the basement stairs and install a temporary guardrail. It was a warm winter and by February 21 of 2000 we set the last wall log. In the first week of March the crane guy came in and the roof was on by March 7, 2000. In September the 42ft front porch and the 26ft back porch were built on the stone foundations which were laid earlier in the year.

The logs needed at least a year to settle so we couldn’t start chinking until the summer of 2001 after the electric wiring was completed inside the log walls. Framing of interior walls and stairways and plumbing and electric work pretty much consumed the rest of the summer. By February of 2001 the chinking both outside and inside was completed. The chinking was a seemingly endless task. Levon is extremely good at it. I mixed the mud the old fashioned way (with mud boat and hoe) and together we applied and finished it.

Being February, the next job was to insulate the large open ceiling and start the wood burner in the basement so it was warm enough to work inside. The door and window trim was handmade and installed next and the upstairs loft was framed in. After all the framing and mechanicals were completed, all of the interior walls and the 16ft ceiling were covered with pine boards. By the spring of 2002 we were installing the river rock fireplace, the chestnut laminate flooring and the soft mustard milk painted kitchen cabinets with beautiful pewter hardware. During this time all of the interior doors were handmade and their antique hardware was restored or repaired and refurbished as were the antique lighting fixtures. Try going to the hardware store for those parts and they think your speaking a foreign language or something! It took many years of collecting and gathering old locks and lights to come up with the required number of working sets to complete the project. The central heat and air and plumbing were finished in April.

We only had to move about 90 feet from the guest house to the big house but it took us almost a month. We’d been living with most of our belongings in storage boxes for almost four years. By the time we went through them all and found what we had forgotten we had, weeks had past. We made many trips to the Goodwill store, the consignment shop and the local pawn shop. So much of what we had packed away seemed out dated. It needed a thorough going through. Much of it after all was accumulated over thirty years. We even had a garage sale and a few pretty healthy bonfires. After refinishing a few crucial antique pieces to supplement our furnishings, we moved into the house in June of 2002.

There still remains a few trim pieces and some odds and ends left to complete but its proved to be one of the most enjoyable phases of the whole project. Finally being able to display and enjoy our accumulated antiques and collectibles and hang old family pictures and clocks and other memorabilia has been exciting. Hanging the old photos of several generations of our respective grand parents was especially meaningful to us. I feel like I know them better now. We had to visualize these things for so long. Now it brings us a wonderful sense of fulfillment to actually see it.

This really is a turn of the century log cabin. It will always standout as a true example of an Appalachian style dovetail and notch constructed log house, not a factory facsimile so common in this country. This one is real, built the old way. “A giant foot print”, who knows? The furnishing and amenities are state of the art even so, in twenty some years they’ll be changed, but these dovetailed oak logs will never change. With little help they’ll easily stand for 150 years and beyond. Maybe they’ll kindle in future generations, the admiration and awe of the bold pioneering people whose relentless perseverance paved the roads we all now travel. I hope we’ve extended that view well into the future. Maybe these logs will help to demonstrate to others that what we’ve inherited from our grand generations is not material in nature at all, but rather the future itself.

Now the itch has been scratched. My dream has become reality and my curiosity has been satisfied. We have met the challenge, our mark is made. Now I know and I hope that my grandchildren and others in some small measure, may come to know what it must have taken. Now I feel like I understand what “Our Grand Parents” of 5 or 6 generations ago must have known all along. “Survival IS the Great Inheritance”…

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