While some structures are in remarkable condition, it requires a trained eye to recognize if logs are unacceptable for reuse due to damage or decay. With burnable forest and tall, straight trees well-suited for construction becoming scarce in Scandinavia, many Finnish woodsmen willingly volunteered when the Swedish Kingdom began actively seeking recruits to help the New Sweden colonists who were in desperate need of agricultural land clearing and new homes. Our architecture, literature, art, music, and collective imagination continue to be influenced by this enduring image of home, so much so that one might believe that early American settlers invented the architectural style. In more sophisticated designs such as the Penn Plan, they were placed in central locations to simultaneously heat several rooms at once. We are currently offering a unique opportunity to see this gem in person, as it has been professionally reassembled at our facility in Carbondale, Colorado. But he also knows his way around the records departments of rural county seats, where he tracks real-estate documents to learn about a building`s original owners, most of whom were German and Czech immigrant farmers. Rainek`s interest in the buildings of oak, cedar and tamarack goes beyond the carpentry. Email: [email protected], Copyright 2019 - Distinguished Boards and Beams - Powered By Blend Web Marketing. Distinguished Boards and Beams often hears stories of homeowners who had no idea that beautifully preserved hand hewn logs were hiding under the surface of their historic home’s later additions. By the middle of the 19th century, railroad companies began to see opportunity in promoting the nostalgia of America's log cabin history by creating luxury log cabins as an escape for he rich. Distinguished Boards and Beams has a revolving inventory of authentic reclaimed historic log cabins built from hand hewn logs by early American craftsmen. If no stones were available, then twigs and clay were used. Wood Flooring commonly made of puncheons, or split logs fitted next to each other with the round sides down. ''They were dirt poor and normally their tools were crude. Rainek, 36, of Hubertus, Wis., northwest of Milwaukee, earns about $70,000 a year by restoring abandoned 19th-Century log cabins and selling them to 20th-Century home buyers. Most farmers are willing to part with the abandoned structures for less than $5,000, Rainek said. Built in the early 1790s for wealthy landowners on Kentucky frontier, The Old Hill Place was considered one of the finest and largest log homes in the region. The first timbers harvested were often used to make a temporary lean-to or hut partially dug into a hillside. In larger, more permanent homes, stairs were often added, along with interior finish carpentry around windows and doors. Even the earliest American settler log cabins were relatively young when considering that the Scandinavian immigrants who had the knowledge and skill to build them were coming from a refined tradition that likely stretched back to around 5500 B.C. Early American immigrants in need of expedient shelter overwhelmingly chose log homes because they were relatively easy to build and their materials called only for resources that were readily available in The New World. All of the hand hewn timbers were destroyed. His latest restoration effort is taking shape on an empty lot off Janes and Maple Avenues near Downers Grove, a long haul from the field in Kewaunee County, Wis., on Lake Michigan near Green Bay, where Rainek found the 20-by-30-foot log cabin built in 1885. Plus, you`re saving a piece of history that otherwise would be lost.''. For early American settlers it was usually much more realistic and convenient to simply cut down more trees in their new location and use them to build another home.