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Siding Renovation of Old Log Home
The house as it looked in the early 1920s.
Even then, the home had indoor running water and plumbing.
More often than not, when log cabin siding is used for remodeling purposes it's applied to an existing framed structure. That wasn't the case on Linda and Glenn Ophus' home in Big Sandy, Montana. They used our siding to remodel an existing log home.
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The house was covered with pink aluminum siding in the mid 50s. A section of the aluminum siding and underlying white painted wood siding were removed while Glenn Ophus considered restoring the structure to its original log look.
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According to Glenn, who has done a fair amount of research on the history of his home, there are two conflicting stories that trace its origin. The first story, told by an eighty-something neighbor, indicates that the house was built around 1915. The second, passed on by Glenn's dad, is a bit more romantic and probably closer to the truth. The source of this story was an old-timer who swore he took refuge in the house during the "Great Blizzard of 1887". Given that Glenn's folks found pages from an 1864 newspaper in one of the interior walls, it's possible that the house is even older.
When Glenn's parents bought the house in 1948, it was covered with a flat wood siding that was painted white. In the mid-fifties the Ophuses added a framed wing to the house and re-sided the house with pink aluminum siding.
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The Ophuses invented their own "dipping and dripping" process and prefinished their cedar siding with protective exterior finish. The extra care in preparation has resulted in siding that looks like new, even after five years.
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When Glenn took charge of the home, he and Linda thought long and hard about restoring the building to its original log design. In fact, Glenn went so far as to expose a portion of the original log wall. "I just wanted to stare at the thing for a month or two", says Glenn, "to see if I could motivate myself to take on the challenge. Linda and I even went to a seminar of refinishing original wood structures, but in the end common sense prevailed. There were just too many problems and matching the framed addition to the log original logs would have been difficult at best."So, the project stood in abeyance for awhile and the Ophuses pondered a solution. As Glenn said when we talked to him recently, "We wanted something that would blend into the rustic surroundings and was respectful of the history of the house. We knew that if we were patient something would turn up". Turns out he was right. Linda and Glenn stopped by a bakery that happened to be finished with our siding.
They liked the look, tracked us down, and bought their western red cedar siding in the autumn of 1995. They pre-finished the siding with a professional wood finish using their own "dipping and dripping" process in a heated building in early winter. Then, Glenn removed the fifties vintage pink siding, exposing the white painted wood siding which provided a consistent, flat nailing surface.
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The results after finishing the home with Glu-Lam-Log standard western red cedar siding.
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Finally, he and his brother-in-law, Ken, applied the cedar siding to the building in Janurary 1996 during one of those wonderful Chinook periods that can raise the temperature from minus thirty to plus fifty in a matter of hours.
Five years later, the application still looks great…and so does the 14x16 guest house that was built to house friends and family during visits.
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