CHAINSAW PALACE

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So we began to work. Later, when people asked what our greatest motivation was, I responded, "Desperation!"

We started by drawing our own house plans. Actually, my wife did. Her plans included wiring and plumbing diagrams, although she had never drawn plans even for a doghouse before.

Her drawing, which took place on a yellow legal pad that somehow survived the storm, included a basement level with a huge second den, a play room, a large writing office for the three of us, a workshop, and a photo darkroom. The ground level included a large kitchen, a familyroom/livingroom combination, a dining room, two huge bedrooms, one bathroom, and a sewing room/pantry combination. The upper level featured a sitting room overlooking the downstairs level, two more bedrooms, and an open area with full cathedral ceiling and exposed beams with space to add six more rooms if needed. In total, we would have 4,300 usable square feet of heated space and the equivalent of 25 rooms. (Some of the rooms are 32 feet long and 20 feet wide. The bedrooms are 20 x 16; the office is 15 x 18, and the smaller upstairs bedrooms are 16 x 16.)

When we asked about borrowing money on a low-interest rate, we were told that we'd need $150,000 to build the house of our dreams (spawned by our real-life nightmare), repayable in three convenient payments of $50,000 per year, plus interest, or we could take the easy-payment route and pay only $1,300 per month for 30 years—a total payoff of $468,000.

That was the final straw that impelled us to build our own house. When we told a few friends what we intended to build—for $20,000—those who did not think that I was a raving lunatic were convinced that I was simply avoiding reality, that I was living a fantasy to keep from facing the real world.

The cost of a 4,300-squdre-foot home:

The bank wanted $468,000 for a 30-year mortgage. We built our house for $20,000.

Tackling the Logs

We began to work by counting, as accurately as possible, the number of logs we'd need. We determined that we'd mill or square logs (actually, rectangle them) that were eight inches thick and 10 inches high. Length would range from 60 feet to the shortest distances in the house—between windows. We did not want any logs spliced: all would run in one piece from point to point. We'd need 118 logs, we decided, of varying lengths, and we set about cutting the 60-footers first, to be sure that we did not somehow misuse the best logs.

The first steps were to measure and cut the logs at both butt and top and then to maneuver the logs onto four-foot blocks of wood we called saw blocks, which would keep the tip of the chainsaw bar from striking the ground and rocks.

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