Simple but elegant; The log cabin all grown up

Building a new house is always an adventure, and for Paul Plumadore and Jim Tindell of Milanville, PA building their home on River Road has been the adventure of a lifetime.

Plumadore had been coming to Milanville since 1983, weekending in a “funky little cottage” on the property. But everything changed in 2007, after a two-decades- long dispute over his inheritance of the riverfront parcel was finally resolved, and Tindell, who’d long been saving money to invest in real estate, made an offer. “It was then that we decided to invest right here where we already were,” Plumadore said. “The question was: build what?”

What they decided on was a log house, and for this, they turned to a well-known Beach Lake, PA company that specializes in custom-built log houses, Estemerwalt Log Homes.

“We wanted to create a house that was something between a rustic log cabin feeling and something more modern,” Plumadore explained.

Tindell joined in, “It’s laid out a bit like a barn. Having it look like a barn was a conscious decision.”

From day one, the design process was definitely a collaboration. As Plumadore tells it, he sketched the original floor plan and took it to Kurt Propst and Elizabeth Reece, Estemerwalt’s principles, who represent the fourth and fifth generations respectively in the family-owned lumber business. “They kept making drawings for us,” Plumadore recounted. “We kept tweaking.”

Still holding down jobs in New York City, they spent weekends in the country planning their house. “Paul loved the process,” Jim reported. “Mondays he’d be there at Estemerwalt—every Monday.”

“It was the most fun I ever had in my life,” Plumadore said. “I loved it. I was involved in every single step of the design.”

The main living quarters are laid out entirely on the ground floor, including master bedroom and full bath, kitchen, living room, screened-in porch, mudroom and garage. Offices and media room are upstairs, and perched on top of the house—from the outside it looks like a square tower—is a sitting room/observation point that overlooks an extensive flower garden and the open field that extends all the way to the Delaware River. By way of explanation, Plumadore confessed, smiling, “I always wanted a tree house.”

“You can see the river from here,” he said, “or watch the eagles. It’s like an observatory, especially in winter when there’s a snowstorm, or when there’s lightening. It’s great to observe the sky.”

The house has no basement; given its proximity to the river, building on a concrete slab seemed the best course of action. Another big decision was not to extend rounded logs to the interior walls, opting instead for flat surfaces.

Construction began in 2011, and it took a two-man team, headed by Garry Sheard of Boyds Mills Builder’s, two years to complete both the log construction and interior woodworking. As construction progressed, Plumadore and Tindell, still weekenders, described the anticipation they felt each time they arrived at the close of the workweek to discover what progress had been made. “They were always here working,” Plumadore said, offering not only enthusiastic praise for their work ethic but also their fine craftsmanship.

As construction neared an end, the homeowners decided to tackle the indoor finishing work themselves. As with many house construction projects, they found they had exhausted their budget by that point. “All the staining and polying was done by us,” they explained, Plumadore adding, “We should never have thought of pickling,” a whitewashing technique they used on the flat, wooden interior walls. In a log house where one might expect to see mostly rustic décor, the homeowners chose an eclectic mix of modern furnishings and antiques (the business the two men were in for many years). “My mom always said, ‘As long as it doesn’t fight, you can put all sorts of things together.’”

Among the home’s modern features are the large windows that overlook the backyard and bring the beauty of the extensive flower garden right into the living space. The garden, they confess, is a lot of work, but its impact on the look and feel of the home is not to be minimized, particularly when everything is in summer’s full bloom. An unusual stone fireplace, inspired by a picture in a magazine, adds another modern touch. Its large slabs were custom-cut from a boulder quarried in Lakewood, PA. (Another custom-cut boulder in the backyard provides a stone bench for sitting in the garden.)

As for environmentally friendly features, there are many. Log construction, done right, is energy efficient, helping hold heat out in the summer and heat in during winter. The house is heated and cooled by a geothermal system, and the concrete floor (attractively studded with pieces of recycled glass and mother of pearl) is radiant-heated. In summer, the concrete slab and floor transfer the coolness of the earth indoors with minimal necessity for turning on the air conditioning.

Building a log home

When we first set out to find a log home to feature in this issue of Our County Home, we went to talk to Kurt and Elizabeth Reece at Estemerwalt Log Homes, a company that traces its beginnings to the 1880s, when founder Peter Propst opened the Propst Lumber Company in the Lackawanna Valley in Archbald, PA. Later, in the 1920s, Peter purchased the property in Berlin Township, and on it was a beautiful lake, which he christened Estemerwalt—a combination of the names of his three children: Ester, Emory and Walter. In successive generations, Emory ran the family business, followed by his son Robert, who moved the lumber company to its present Beach Lake location. Today, Robert’s son Kurt is company president and Kurt’s daughter, Elizabeth Reece, is director of marketing. Kurt is the one responsible for changing the company’s name to Estemerwalt and for launching the log home business in the 1980s.

“In our first year, we made and sold 10 log homes,” Kurt said. “Now, in a typical year, we make between 30 to 50.”

Their choice of logs is always Eastern White Pine, a renewable natural resource, harvested regionally. “A 50-mile radius from Beach Lake takes care of our needs easily,” he said. “We are in a great area for this species, and in the East, it’s the best for what we do.”

Estemerwalt starts from 11 different basic sizes and shapes of log houses, but, make no mistake, these are not prefab homes. “We never make two houses alike,” Kurt said. “Each one is unique. Every wall is unique.” Everything is based on the customers’ wishes.

“When people come to us, they usually show up with drawings or maybe photos from a magazine,” he explained. “What we do then is sit together and we create a preliminary drawing. After that, we make alterations based on what they want. One thing I do have to say about our customers: they are some of the most educated homebuyers there are. They also have a real desire for a log house; often it’s an old dream and they’ve been waiting to do it for years. Some others are first-time buyers.”

Next comes custom cutting the logs. Estemerwalt employs about 20 people within its sawmill and log home production facilities. One piece at a time, they assemble a package of pre-cut logs produced to the final plan’s exact specifications.

The next step is selecting a contractor. (Estermerwalt does not do the actual construction.) “The last thing you want to hear from a contractor is ‘I never did one, but I’d sure like to try,’” he laughed. Thus, the company has a tried and tested group of contractors in different parts of the state and the country who have been building log homes for years. “We know who the good people are; they are the ones who will not embarrass us with our customers,” he added.

Next comes the permitting process. “At this point our original five pages of simple drawings turn into 15 to 20 pages of specifics—everything that will be needed to pass local and international building codes. After that the subs [subcontractors] put in the foundation, and then the main contractor takes over.”

Once a log home is finished, the wood finish needs very little maintenance. “You’ll never have to paint another wall, never fill another nail hole,” he said. “The inside maintenance is next to nothing.”

“Is there something different about log houses?” I asked

“The one thing I’ve heard, and I’d say I agree, it’s like coming home to a vacation.” Speaking of his own log home, he said, “That home feels different from any other I’ve lived in.”

As for being environmentally friendly, today’s log homes are very energy efficient—the thickness of the wood itself acting as substantial insulation. Modern log homes hold in the heat in winter and keep it out in summer.

And then Kurt said something about carbon emission that surprised me. If you cut down a mature green tree and dry it in the kiln, and build a house that’s going to last 100 years or more, the carbon will stay locked up for 100 years.

Green thinking also plays a leading role in how the Propst’s run their company. “We have no byproducts,” Kurt said, referring to the manufacturing process. “We burn sawdust in the kiln or sell it for animal bedding, and the bark is sold for landscape mulch. There’s no waste. And the only other energy we need is electricity and some diesel fuel for the heavy machinery.”

Finally, we talked about shopping locally. “I am a truly buy-local person,” he remarked. “The better my neighbors do, the better we all do. Perhaps because we see ourselves as small local business, I feel strongly that everyone should buy local.”

When Paul Plumadore and Jim Tindell began their house-construction project, they, too made the conscious decision to shop locally. “We wanted everything about the project to be as local as it could be,” and so they sourced both materials and labor locally. They had only praise for everyone involved—contractors and subcontractors alike.

Simply elegant is the only way to describe the log house that Plumadore and Tindell have created with the help of many local contractors and businesses. The design of their country home lets them live close to nature—it’s right out their back door. Its many sustainable features reflect their concern for the environment. And their selection of modern and antique furnishings all mixed together makes this house unique and an expression of their own country lifestyle.