By Colleen Morrissey
Photos by The Wild Studio
In the two years that Lynne and Roy had been looking for a second home to buy or renovate, they had probably seen a hundred houses. None of the properties they had visited, though, appealed to them.
It wasn't that they were picky. They just wanted a house on a lake with lots of built-in privacy. Almost every weekend for two years the couple would get in their car, drive somewhere that sounded interesting, and meet with a local real estate agent to tour properties. "We found many lake communities, but the houses were very expensive and your neighbor was an arm's length away," Lynne says. "and since Roy insisted on having privacy, those were all rejected."
Besides privacy, the couple was also searching for a weekend home that was no farther than two and a half hours from their main residence on Long Island. During this whole time, however, the couple never considered looking in New Jersey—that is, until Roy noticed an ad in The New York Times vacation homes section one day. “It was a tiny little ad, maybe two inches wide,” Lynne says. “It said: ‘Own your own lake.’
Their interest piqued, Lynne and Roy drove over to the property, which is located in the mountainous northwestern part of the state. They fell in love instantly. “It is on approximately 100 acres and it has its own lake, which is about 25 acres,” Lynne says. “It was a great find.”
The couple paid the owner his asking price and within a few days they were the proud owners of a small mountain, acres of pristine forestland, and 11 tagged bears that call the property home. “There is one that is nearly 650 pounds,” Lynne says. “It’s like being in Montana, not New Jersey. That is the most fantastic part of this. And we are only 50 minutes from Manhattan!”
The only negative about the property was the existing house, which was on the lakeshore. It not only was too small for them to live in, but it was ugly as well. “It was aluminum sided, had small windows, and it didn’t have a deck,” Lynne says. “And it was sitting next to this magnificent lake.”
The couple decided that they would have to do something about this little house.
They contacted builders about enlarging it, but soon found out that—due to structural limitations—the home couldn’t be significantly renovated.
It was then that the couple had to rethink their plans. “For two years we were looking for a home on a lake,” Lynne says. “We never thought that we were going to have to build a house.” Realizing they had an opportunity to create the home of their dreams, the couple became excited at the prospect of building from scratch. And with all of their property, it wasn’t going to be too hard to choose a site. “Because we had all of this property, we decided to build afresh,” Lynne says.
It was Roy who said that if he ever built a house, he’d want it to be constructed of log. While the idea kind of took Lynne by surprise, it seemed like the thing to do especially with the home located in such a rustic setting. “I have always wanted to be a cowgirl, so going Western and rustic was a very natural choice for me.”
“Once Roy said he wanted a log home, that was the extent of his input,” Lynne says with a good-natured laugh. “I basically took it from there and did it al' myself.” With the decision made to build a log home, Lynne went out and bought every log home magazine she could find, pouring through each issue for information on how to design, build, and decorate a log home. “I did extensive research, even on the Internet,” Lynne says. “I read everything that I could get my hands on.”
Using the magazines she collected, Lynne created a slew of folders with pictures of fireplaces, kitchens, and more torn from the pages. “By using magazines, I was able to decide on the look for the inside of the house,” she says. “I tore out every picture, for example, of a fireplace I liked, and that was how I was able to make a decision about the look of my two fireplaces. It was all done by pictures from log home magazines.”
After researching how to choose a log home producer, Lynne decided her main criterion was to have it located close to her building site. “I didn’t want somebody who lived two hours away and was not going to devote himself 100 percent to my project,” Lynne says. Looking in the back of her magazines, Lynne found a builder who was less than a half an hour away. He turned out to be a builder-dealer representing Alta Log Homes, a log home manufacturer headquartered in Halcottsville, NY.
Since the couple hadn’t planned originally to build a new home, another criterion in selecting a producer was finding one that would put their home on a fast-track building schedule. They didn’t want to lose any more time in enjoying their vacation property. The Alta rep promised them that as soon as the couple had their plans drawn up, he could break ground.
Lynne and Roy took a trip up to the dealer’s office, toured some of the other Alta log homes that he had built, and discussed in detail with him how their log home would be constructed. “We were very impressed,” Lynne says.
Feeling satisfied with their choice, the couple purchased a full-log package, which includes nearly everything from the precut log walls, gables, and roof rafters to the spruce roof decking, windows, trim, and more. The walls of their home would be made from milled northern white pine, which the company air-dries to reduce the logs’ moisture content. The logs are cut in what Alta calls its “classic” log shape, planed smooth on both the inside-facing and outside-facing surfaces. All of the logs are notched and grooved at the company’s factory to form a unique interlocking log wall system designed to provide a solid, weather tight fit.
Even though Lynne didn’t have any experience designing homes, she decided to take on that part of the project herself. “I have a house on Long Island,” Lynne says, “and I knew immediately what I did and did not want in the layout.” Within three months, she had her plans ready for submission to an architect, who fine-tuned them and put them in blueprint form. “I drew everything to scale that I wanted,” she says. “A friend helped me figure out certain spatial relationships, especially with the cabinetry.”
Within five months of purchasing the property, the builder cleared a site facing southwest toward the lake and began work on the nearly 6,000-square-foot, prow-fronted log home. “It then took another two years to build,” Lynne says. Part of the problem was that the couple’s driveway, a gravel road, is nearly a mile and a half long. “It basically took us two years to build this house because builders and contractors had to come down this one-lane road,” Lynne says. “One time they had to walk the trusses in. It took them five hours to carry them in because there was no way they could get them in by truck.”
The couple spent almost every weekend during construction in the property’s original house, which they planned to convert into a guest house. “The crew knew that every Friday morning, rain or shine, Lynne was going to be walking around the house,” she says. She became such a regular presence on site that the crew even bought her a hard hat. “They wrote on it: GCIT. That stands for ‘General Contractor in Training,” she says with a laugh.
Once their home was completed, the couple had one more project for their contractor to tackle: converting the original little lakeshore home into a log guesthouse. “Well, he put a deck on it, installed all new windows, and then attached log siding,” Lynne says. “So now it looks like a little log cabin. We call it the daughter to our larger log home.”
Lynne and Roy are thrilled with how their new log home looks on the outside and how comfortable it feels on the inside. Their home is everything they could have dreamed of in a vacation home and more. Lynne is especially proud of all the work and hours of research she put into creating this special retreat for her family. She says: “It has been the most fun I’ve ever had.”