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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.”
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