Western Red Cedar Log Home Photos

Log homes are a very visual product. After exhibiting at home shows and talking with customers on the phone, it is very evident that everyone wants to see photos. One of our most popular galleries on our website is the Western Red Cedar log home photos. With the deep color to the logs, part of its natural beauty, it is no wonder that people want to view what various homes and features look like.

Western Red Cedar is a very versatile wood species. With its durability is has been used for roof shakes, siding shakes, log railing, channel siding, and door and window trim. In the realm of log homes it is used for both milled log homes and handcrafted.

For post and beam or timber frame homes it can be used for smaller ones. Due to the structural strength limitations the larger square footage usually associated with homes in the United States Western Red Cedar is not typically used for these two styles of homes.  In Japan post and beam homes are commonly built from Western Red Cedar. In this island country most of the log or timber homes are used for weekends so the square footage is usually fairly small.

When browsing through photo galleries of log homes here are a few things to watch for. In closer up photos take a look at the end joints. This is were one log ends and the next begins with in the log wall. Higher quality homes have log ends which line up and meet smoothly. Lower quality joints have a ledge where the logs join. If there is a photo of a log wall under construction, take a look from the top to see what type of joinery is used. Some logs are simply cut and slid together. Other times there is a slot notched into the end of each log and a wooden or vinyl spleen is slid down into the joint. And other times the joint is cut with finger joinery where the ends of the logs are pushed together and the fingers intertwine one with another.

For handcrafted log homes some joints are done as described above. Other times the log home company will boast of 'full length wall logs'. This means that there is no end joints within the walls. Instead corners and intersecting interior walls are used to meet where the logs end. With this style log lengths can be up to fifty feet.

Another thing to look closely at is the corners. The most common corner styles are butt and pass, dovetail, corner posts, or full saddle notch. A butt and pass corner is where the end of every other log is visible on the corner. The dovetailed corner is just like a furniture drawer that is dovetailed. The triangular or diamond corners are intertwined. A corner post design has no protruding logs. Instead a vertical post is mounted to the corner. And the full saddle notched corner shows the end of every log on both sides of the corner. Corners are very important for helping to seal the home. A tight corner means that no air or light is passing through. Saddle notched corners are typically the most air tight of all the styles.

Photos of specifically red cedar homes display the color variation between the outer sapwood and the heart of the logs. This contrast is very appealing. Pictures of milled red cedar show how little the heart of the cedar checks or cracks. In fact some machine cut homes will not even have any checks showing.

So if you come across a website that shows a collection of Western Red Cedar log home photos all together be sure to pay attention to the corners and the joinery. Compare homes company to company on a factual basis, not just on who hired the most creative photographer. For log homes, it is all in the detail.