Large Log Home Restoration — Delaware, Ohio

This was one of the largest homes we've taken on, and it came with a problem that's common on older log homes: too much finish. Over the years it had been stained again and again, each new coat going on over the last, until the logs were wearing several layers of it.

That sounds like protection, but it works the other way. Stacked finish stops the wood from breathing, traps moisture underneath, and gives each new coat nothing solid to hold onto — so it peels, and the next re-stain peels faster. There's no fixing that from the top. It all has to come off.

So we media blasted the entire house down through every layer to bare timber. On a home this size that's a serious undertaking, and it's most of why the job ran close to two months. There's no shortcut on a surface this large — any patch left under old finish shows up later as a patch in the new one.

Taking it back to bare wood also showed us what the old stain had been hiding. We repaired the logs that needed it, and made chink and caulk repairs wherever joints had opened up.

Then Perma-Chink stain in Dark Natural across the whole house, and a gloss topcoat over it to carry the UV load and give the finish its depth. The difference is a finish that's actually bonded to the wood this time, rather than sitting on top of years of old coats.