A log cabin near Pudasjärvi

KONTIO log homes are popular not just here, but have a particularly strong tradition in Finland itself. This KONTIO log cabin near Pudasjärvi was built for a couple working in the city of Oulu, in northern Finland, in a beautiful setting surrounded by the pine forest that the whole house is built from. The house serves as a weekend cabin, for spending weekends and free time. It's very typical for Finns to have two homes: one in the city, where they work, and another roughly an hour's drive from their main residence, where they spend their free time. A weekend home like this is often visited during the week too — once the working day ends, around five o'clock, the whole family piles into the car and heads out to spend a pleasant evening at their log home in nature.

KONTIO log homes can take on very unusual shapes too, like this house, which the owners had designed by their own architect. The whole building was then engineered into a log structure, including preparation for the electrical wiring, which runs through the interior of the log walls. The entire house is manufactured down to the last detail at the factory, and then assembly on site goes like clockwork. Thanks to the flat plot, preparing the foundation slab wasn't demanding either — it was ready within three weeks.

KONTIO log homes are built very quickly. Within 4 weeks, the closed shell of the house was complete — exterior walls, interior partitions, a roof finished with sheathing, and windows and doors fitted — and over the following 5 weeks, the finishing work and interior installations were carried out. So the whole house was ready to move into within 3 months, including building the foundation slab. Since the glue-laminated beams are already dried to 18% moisture in special drying chambers during manufacturing, there's no need to let the house "settle through a winter" first.

KONTIO log homes are built from Finnish Nordic pine, which, thanks to the harsh climate it grows in, has very fine growth rings and better thermal-insulation properties than central European pine. This house was no exception.

The interior layout is very efficiently solved — a large living space connecting the kitchen, dining area and living room, plus two children's rooms and the parents' bedroom. Of course, no Finnish home would be complete without a sauna, a typical feature of Finnish homes, and a sauna session is one of Finns' favourite pastimes. We really love the exterior stain chosen here, a pleasant brown shade that lets the house blend beautifully into its surroundings. The interior is typically Scandinavian — pleasant colour tones, no excess. Every bedroom is accented with shades of blue, giving them a pleasant, intimate character. The fabric curtains, paired here and there with fabric wallpaper on the walls, pleasantly break up the light milky stain on the interior walls of the log home. The total usable area of the house is 110 m².