
Europeans tend to build a log cabin for use in the garden and used as a summer house. However, log cabins are being built and used as home extensions more and more as a cheap alternative.
The strongest and most resilient log cabins were made with siding. With this kind, the logs were attached together on the interior of the cabin as well as being covered with a number of different materials to make them strong.
Inside the log cabin, special attention should be given to stains and water infiltrations. The most likely places that will be affected by water infiltrations are support beams that run through the wall. Water can seep into walls if these support beams are not tightly sealed. This can easily lead to rot and insect infestation.
Although log cabins and log houses are constructed from the similar materials they do have some differences; log cabins are usually built with round rather than hewn or hand-worked wood where as log houses tend be a one story building, with an almost "less finished" appearance (unlike the log cabins) as these were initially constructed with the intention of being short-term.
The heyday of the log cabin in North America was in the third and fourth quarters of the 19th Century, which corresponds to the widespread trek Westward after the Civil War.
Due to the wood material, log cabins need to be maintained in order to keep the wood from decaying prematurely and to maximize their service.
Gone are the times when log cabins were found with dirt floors and no facilities. Nowadays, they are as good as your own home.
Two common styles of log cabins, classified on the basis of the style of their roofs, are the purlin style and the gable style.
There are parts of Europe that use log cabins as summerhouses or as an extra room in a garden.
If you’ve never experienced life in a log cabin, you should ‘test the water’ before buying, by renting a holiday log cabin.