Log Cabin Clubhouse Restoration — Kent, Ohio

This clubhouse sits on a golf course in Kent, and it's the first building people see when they arrive. After years in the open, the stain had worn away completely on large sections of wall and the wood underneath had started to suffer for it.

The repairs came first. Some of the logs had damage that needed fixing, along with other wood on the building, and there's no point putting a finish over wood that's already failing. We got the structure sound before anything else.

Then we media blasted the whole exterior back to bare wood. Blasting reaches into the checks and around the corners evenly, and on a building this visible that consistency matters — any patch of old finish left behind shows through the new stain.

Bare wood doesn't always come out of blasting the same color, though. Walls that took more sun weather differently from walls that didn't, and a few of these had come up noticeably darker or grayer than the rest. So we brightened those walls to bring the wood back to an even tone before staining. It's an easy step to skip, and it's the difference between a building that looks uniform and one where every wall is a slightly different shade.

We stained it in Perma-Chink Driftwood, a soft weathered gray, and finished the joints in white chink. The pairing gives the clubhouse a clean, light look — pale gray log with crisp white lines between — that suits a golf course far better than the dark brown most people picture when they hear "log cabin."