A Log Home is more than a place to live. It’s freedom. It’s warmth. It’s a way of life that is understood most by Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes. We have a unique family heritage of passion for the outdoors that is evident in every home we build and it’s a spirit you will feel each time when you walk into yours...
Enduring Design
Log homes and Timber frame homes are fundamental American structures, combining construction techniques and materials from the earliest pioneers. The design and construction of modern log homes and timber homes follow many of the basic engineering techniques from decades ago, but new technology has made them easier and faster to build, more energy – efficient and architecturally unique.
History of Style
Log and timber homes have an architectural style and aesthetic unlike any other type of residential dwelling. In the past, individual characteristics of construction identified a log home as belonging to a particular part of the country. Flat logs with wide bands of chinking and dove-tailed corners were Appalachian. Large, round logs with saddle-notched corners were predominantly found in the Rockies. Log homes in the Midwest and Northeast tended towards smaller logs, tightly fitted together with no chinking. Today, with advances in transportation and technology, the style of log home is determined mostly by the owner’s style and taste. Choices of wood, architectural style, accessories and more available wherever you live. Where style once reflected the location of the log home, now the style reflects you.
Renewable resources
The primary material used in log home construction is solid wood-the most versatile natural building material in the world. Wood is strong, long lasting and beautiful. The wood is typically exposed and visible on both the exterior and interior of the structure, adding a natural elegance and comfortable charm to the home. In addition to its beauty and versatility, wood is considered as “green” building material – a renewable resource. As a natural product, wood also offers some natural resistance to sun and moisture conditions, while regulating temperatures and improving air quality. High thermal mass means improved insulating properties for your home. Conductive heat flow refers to the movement of heat through a material such as wood. A log’s innate thermal mass, or capacity to store the heat, works as a barrier to impede the progress of heat flow through your log home’s wall – so heat stays inside during the Winter and outside in the Summer. In fact, according to the Log Home Council, log homes are as much as 15 percent more energy efficient than stick-framed homes. This fact makes a log home an attractive and environmentally conscious building option for the future.
History of Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes
Jim Barna was involved in construction nearly his entire life. As a child he helped his father build their family’s home. While still a young man, Jim started his own excavating and construction company. But, it was only after returning from Vietnam that his future in log homes began to take shape. Strongly influenced, Jim Began designing log homes with the same massive timbers. Instead of using crudely-crafted butt-and-pass log walls, as other were doing, Jim Began milling his logs to specific, uniform tolerances and joining them together with interlocking saddle-notch corners and a tongue-and-groove method that kept them straight, air- and water-tight. His methods caught on, and today the multiple log systems produced by Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes lead the industry in innovation, integrity and ease of construction. Today Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes is a distributor owned company. Our goal is to make the designing, choosing and building process as easy as possible. Everything we do is designed to break the entire process down into small, manageable segments. Through our experienced sales and support staff, we offer the direction and help you to find the right home plan, log system and log home kit to turn your dream of owning a log home into a wonderful reality.
Experience – The Jim Barna difference
Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes is a log home and timber frame home materials producer, having sold about 15,000 high quality log home packages both in the Unites states and Internationally. Beside the Continental United States, we have exported homes all over the world, including but not limited to Russia, Hungary, Croatia, Germany, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Turkey, France and the Czech Republic. Jim Barna has built residential log homes, log home developments, log home churches, log cabins, log home villas and is capable of realizing any customer request. Our unique services for distributors and customers also include special log profiles and sizes such as the 12” milled round logs or the 10x12” square logs, unique log surface such as the hewn surface. We pride ourselves in providing quality materials, exciting log and timber home plans, competitive pricing, sound building systems that can fulfill local building code requirements, great customer service and one of the most comprehensive materials packages in the industry. Jim Barna Log & Timber Homes believes that experience of planning and building your log home or timber frame home is as important as the home itself. Over the past over four decades Jim Barna distributors have guided thousands of people through the process of creating their log homes and thus Jim Barna’s name has become a well-recognized brand both in the log home
and timber frame home market. We understand there are decisions to be made, details to be worked on, dreams to be realized. We are with you every step of the way along the path that leads you to your home – because Barna believes the experience matters.