Log Home Kitchen Final Touches

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We were finally able to complete our log home kitchen remodel with a few finishing touches. Take a look at the before and after. We love how it turned out.

Five years ago we bought a dilapidated log home in the hills of the interior of Alaska. No, we do not live off the grid, just about 15 minutes from town. We have running water from our well as well as electricity. But, we dreamed of having a cozy, Alaskan log home when we moved here so we bought one and got to work.

Our house sits on just over three acres of land and includes our 1,800 square foot log home, a separate two-car garage, and a barn that has a few stall and a chicken coop. It was built in the early 1970’s and has a view out the large front window that we still soak in everyday.

The Original Kitchen

You can read all about the many updates we made to our home in this post. We sanded down and refinished the logs, replaced the roof, completely gutted and redid both bathrooms, and of course, there was the kitchen. There are photos of the kitchen in the above link when we moved in but here’s a reminder of what we were working with:

Yikes. Luckily for us, the previous owners had already begun renovating but had to move unexpectedly. This meant that we didn’t have to deal with too much demolition as it was mostly done by them. We completely stripped the rest of the kitchen, including the wall, the window, and the blue tiling.

The New Kitchen

The major kitchen renovation took my husband and our contractor less than a month to complete. Again, there are photos of the process in this post. We put in hickory cabinets, new appliances a new sink, added an island behind the wood stove and laid flooring. We were amazed at the transformation!

Fast-forward five years and we still love our log home kitchen. I love preparing delicious food for my family everyday in it.

However, we had a few final touches that we wanted to make but other, more important projects got in the way over the years. The barn needed major renovating, my husband deployed, we got a cow who later calved, and we had a baby, to name a few.

Recently, we were finally able to finish up the smaller kitchen projects so it feels complete now. What a difference these seemingly small touches make. Here are a few of the additions that we were glad to make.

Smart Light Fixtures

You can see in an earlier photo the large, outdated florescent lighting that our kitchen had. Unfortunately, they stuck around for awhile. At the time, we couldn’t find any fixtures that we liked enough to replace them and with all of the projects that we had going on, those were not a high priority.

We recently found new lights that we thought would look great in our log home so we switched them out. We couldn’t believe the huge difference that it made in the house! We wish we had switched them sooner but we’re glad that we finally did.

We went with matte black LED lights from Good Earth that can be controlled using our phones. They were really easy to install. We can adjust the brightness as well as the tone of the lights.

This feature is important to us since we like to have warm lighting in our log home. We have installed dimmer switches on almost all of the other light fixtures in the house so we can create a warm and cozy environment. This also allows us to turn up the brightness on those dark winter days so we can see what we’re doing.

Paint and Outlets

If you can believe it, we have been starting at sheetrock for the past few years! We had to build a special wall to hang the cabinets on to allow them to “float” as the logs shift. There isn’t much wall that is actually visible but we just never got around to painting it until now. We went with a creamy shade to add bit of brightness to the kitchen.

We also replaced all of the outlets with new ones that look cleaner and have USB ports for charging devices.

Custom Window Sill

We tore out the original window in the kitchen when we did the major renovation. It could slide open so had a line going down the middle of it. It was replaced with a large, single window so that we can see our beautiful view when we’re in the kitchen. We had to have the window made by a local shop to fit the cut out in the logs.

That meant that we had to have a new pine window sill made locally as well to match the rest of the windows in the house. We stained it with Minwax Polyshades in Classic Oak and now the view from the kitchen is even better.

More Log Home Final Touches

We still have a few projects to complete in our Alaskan log home so stay tuned. This winter we’re tackling the upstairs bedrooms which need new walls, flooring, and light fixtures. That’s the last major project that we need to complete. After that, there are just a few more finishing touches around the house.

It’s exciting to continue to work on our little log home that we love and make it even better. It’s not always easy to fit these projects in between Army life, homeschooling, animals, and all of the other chores around here but we’re doing our best to make it happen and continue to make this home our own.

More Log Home Projects

• Buying and Renovating a Log Home in Alaska
• Cast Iron Display in Our Log Home