Woodstock log home is far from a cabin

Abraham Lincoln, the man most associated with log cabins, would not be able to relate to Ken and Camille Miller's log home in Woodstock.

Not only are the president and the couple from two different centuries, they are from two different worlds.

Lincoln and his neighbors in the mid-1800s had cabins that consisted of one or maybe two rooms with a loft, if they were lucky. They felled the logs themselves and constructed the cabins without any architectural drawings.

The Millers' log home is 7,000 square feet and features an indoor pool on the walkout lower level. It was built following an intricate set of plans that Ken Miller himself designed on a computer with the help of a friend.

Lincoln's log cabin was undoubtedly drafty and had a small fireplace that did triple-duty, providing heat, light and cooking space.

The Millers equipped their log home with such modern conveniences as a gourmet kitchen with Viking convection double oven and state-of-the-art appliances, in-floor hot water heat, wiring for high speed Internet and a home theater room. They even built a wood elevator that brings firewood up to the fireplace from a lower level closet near the garage.

Quite honestly, other than the logs themselves, the homes of Lincoln and the Millers have little in common.

Today's log cabins can be both nostalgic and modern, if they are designed with care, and that is exactly what the Millers set out to do with their Woodstock home.

"We wanted to walk the line between having modern amenities and having a rustic feel," Ken explained. "And we wanted to be able to use all of the rooms, not just look at them."

Casual elegance was what they were working toward, Camille added, so they combined an elegant log home with lots of Craftsman-style furniture, leather couches and chairs, and art glass lamps and fixtures.

The final product is stunning and it is now listed by Harding Real Estate for $1,498,000.

Ken's fascination with log homes began when he was a boy. His aunt had a log cabin in Crivitz, Wis., that he loved. So for the past 20 years the real estate investors have been building and living in log homes with their two children.

"We built two much smaller log kit homes of pine in Algonquin before having this one handcrafted from old growth western red cedar by a Canadian master builder, dissembled, moved here and reassembled six years ago," Ken said.

Set on 10 wooded acres overlooking Lilly Lake, a small no-motors-allowed lake, the Millers' home is exceedingly private. No one would even know it was there from the street since you have to follow a long, winding driveway through the woods with split-rail fences on either side to find the hideaway.

The home features a two-story great room, adjoining eat-in gourmet kitchen, office, three bedroom suites, laundry room, theater room, loft, screened porch, recreation room with built-in bar, indoor 14-by-32-foot pool with a "swim in place" exercise system, six-person hot tub, attached three-car garage, stamped concrete patio with a fire pit, wood deck extending around three-quarters of the house and two large outbuildings, one of which is equipped with an auto lift.

It sits on a five-acre parcel but there is also an adjoining five acres that may be purchased with the home if the buyer so wishes.

Logs for the magnificent home were cut in British Columbia by the Canadian government as part of its annual clearing operations. After the logs air-dried for a year, they were shipped to Alberta where the builder - whom Ken found on the Internet - cut the logs and built the shell and interior log walls of the home in a large field. Once they were done, they dissembled it, shipped it to Illinois by rail and the builder came down to supervise the Illinois crew that Ken hired to do the final assembly.

"The method of log construction used on this home is called Scandinavian Full Scribe," explained Ken. "It is the most painstaking and time-consuming type of log home construction. Each log is scribed by hand to fit tightly to the log course below it. The end result is nothing less than a work of art and the house actually gets tighter as it settles."

Then, in an effort to make the home as energy-efficient and "green" as possible, the careful log construction was combined with modern technologies and materials, like a foam-form foundation that surrounds the concrete foundation with polystyrene insulation, a structurally-insulated roof system under the shingles, a six-zone hot water heating system in the floors and energy saving windows and doors.

"Building a log home takes lot of planning," Ken admitted. "You have to allow for the home to settle three inches so it had to be engineered to account for that. The plumbing has to be coiled so that it, too, can be compressed during the settling process. And if you forget to pre-drill holes for the electrical outlets, you end up with exposed wiring."

Shawn Van Driessche and his crew from Port Byron, Ill., completed the home on site and perfectly dealt with the many intricacies involved, like installing trim around the logs.

It was a challenge to find the authentic wood railings and other items they wanted to include. Ken and Van Driessche found most of the wood railings, the mahogany Craftsman-style doors and the Brazilian cherry flooring locally, but had to special order the wooden railing for the spiral staircase from Colorado.

Van Driessche constructed the center support and the stair treads for the spiral staircase from the trunk of a lodge pole pine tree. The purlins that support the roof system are also made of pine, Ken said, because while cedar is a better insulator, pine is structurally stronger and better able to bear heavy loads.

As for the see-through, two-story fireplace and the exterior piers outside the walkout basement, both are made of dry stack masonry.

Once it was assembled here, the interior of the home was sanded by the Millers' son and then professionals spent months staining the logs and applying three coats of polyurethane by hand, giving the wood a rich, warm glow, Camille said.

"It was fun and challenging to have a project like this to work on," Ken said.

"I spent untold hours on the Internet researching materials and products," he continued, "like the astro-foil insulation that we put under the pool to prevent the heat from escaping into the ground; the natural gas generator we installed in case of a power loss; and the custom cherry Beurtch brand kitchen cabinets to which we added stained green bead board panels to match the granite countertops and bring some color into the house."

But while Camille said she loves reading on the screened porch or sitting on the open front porch, listening to the two waterfalls in the koi pond and watching the birds, the Millers have become restless. And now that their children are leaving the nest, they say they are ready to tackle a new, smaller project in another historic building style - a timber frame or post and beam home this time.

For more information on this home, contact Harding Real Estate at (815) 338-3850.