Building luxury log homes and luxury timber frame homes  is much more involved than just selecting a log home company. Instead, it is the full gamete which begin with ideas, traverse through floor plans, selection of the log home style and materials, excavation, foundation, dryin, and turnkey completion. So let me share with you how we, Cowboy Log Homes, can help to facilitate the build of your luxury log or timber home.

Budgeting a Log or Timber Home

Once you are ready to seriously consider building you should visit a lender or if you are doing a cash build, research your overall idea of how much you can spend, or want to spend, on your project. Without some sort of budget in place it is almost impossible for us to help steer you towards where you need to go.

Luxury Log Home Ideas to Done

In any turnkey project (where you have your home completely built for you and all you have to do is move in) it takes many people with varying degrees of involvement to complete the home. It is never a “one horse show”. Here is the best scenario, in my opinion, to progress through after getting a budgetary idea of what you can spend.

1. Begin by getting all of your ideas together. Whether it is clippings from old magazines, photos you have saved, or by simply beginning to explore the floor plans on our website and marking down the ones you like. All of these are the physical manifestations of the ideals you have stored in your mind for the HOW and WHAT of your new home.

2. Select some luxury log home plans. Take time to go through various floor plans on our website. Mark down plan names of ones that catch your eye. Remember, any floor plan can be modified in almost anyway, so take the time to explore. If it is a photo that catches your eye, then note that. If you love the master suite or the location of the great room, then print out the floor plan and circle it. All of our floor plans can be enlarged by clicking on the photo of it. Also all of the floor plans or photos can be printed out by clicking on the File menu at the top of your browser page and selecting Print.

3. Give us a call. Start the dialogue to share your ideas with us and let us begin to get familiar with your ideas, desires, and overall home. Let us then steer you some and educate you about certain things unique to your home.

4. Running Initial Cost Estimates for your luxury log home. Every choice in a home– at least every major choice in your log home, has to be weighted against the dollar value it will cost. It is best to begin with a log or timber shell estimate for whatever luxury log home floor plan is closest to what you would like to build. At the same time let us also provide an estimated turnkey for you. The turnkey numbers are so important. If a turnkey estimate is not in the ballpark you are anticipating then be willing to back up and not plow forward regardless of what your finances are whispering in your ear.

5. Get log home builder referrals from us. If you don’t have a log home builder in the family or one you already know it is not a bad idea to let us help you with the builder selection. It is vital to your log home to have the right person at the helm for the build. We work with builders who are willing to travel. We also have builders we have worked with. For just about any state west of the Mississippi we have a group of builders who are licensed or can easily get licensed for any of the states or counties. Even places with stringent building requirements, like California, Colorado, and Washington state, these builders have years of experience in both log home construction and building with the codes of the area. So we can put you into contact with one of these builders even if your job site location is not local to us here in Bozeman, Montana.

6. Believe your log home contractor. It sounds silly, but we have had more than one customer get a cost estimate and decide to not believe it. Then they get right down to where they are going to place the order on their log home and they panic. And there they sit with a full set of drawings they purchased and a ton of numbers we have put together for them as a courtesy, and they can’t built the home. Their home never leaves the blueprint paper on which they are printed. A much better scenario is to believe the initial cost estimates and back the home off to a smaller floor plan and or a different log home style that they can afford.

7. Choosing finish materials. As you move forward past the initial selection of a floor plan, cost estimates, purchasing drawings, now you are ready to go shopping. The shopping for finish materials can come a step or two sooner, but don’t leave it out all together. Get a list from us or your general contractor of finish materials you need to shop for to select. You need to write down the store name, item name, and item price or price per unit. Then the builder can use those live numbers to build out your contract.

8. Let us work with your builder. To provide a smooth transition from us helping you select your home style and floor plan to the building of the home, it is important for us to be able to work with your builder. We prefer to review the drawings with the builder. We like to brain storm together about finish materials, construction materials, and things of this nature so the materials provided match what the builder prefers to use. Sometimes we will even have one of our crews come and do the dryin as an authorized installer for Cowboy Log Homes. Then your home is turned over to a local builder we have been working with throughout the planning and staging phases of your home.

All in all, many headaches and heartaches can be avoided if you allow us to work in the best capacity for you. Allow us to have the latitude to do our job and provide you with the knowledge we have spent years accumulating through on the field experience, by building our own log homes, and by helping people who have not had a smooth log home build. Luxury log homes are usually a once in a life time investment and adventure for a homeowner. So make it the right one.

Cowboy Log Homes