In November 2000 the Butins broke ground, "and boy did we break ground," William says. More than 100 dynamite charges were set to prepare the site for construction.

"It was like a war zone," William says. "When we first saw it we thought, 'What did we do?' But now you'd never be able to tell we did anything to the land. It was a painful process though."

Even with that amount of blasting, more demolition had to be done. "The blasting didn't create small enough pieces," Fogelson says. "The excavator had to manually break the rocks into usable material. Some were still the size of a car. It was certainly a mess for a while." But in the end, all the hard work paid off.

"There was a tremendous amount of ground work to prepare for the construction of this home," Fogelson says. "The result, though, is that the home fits the property like a glove."

Road Bumps
William and Linda were 1,000 miles away at their primary residence in Austin, Texas, during most of the construction, but that didn't stop William from visiting the site during the log raising. "I wanted to ride the top log," William says. "The weather was just too miserable though." William roughed the blowing snow for the first couple log courses before retreating to find shelter. Fogelson says bad weather is just par for the course. "It's Murphy's Law; the weather always hits when you have the guys and the crane there," he says. "It was pretty nasty up there. They worked through it though."

No home project ever goes off without a hitch. When the Butins moved into their home in June of 2002, finish work was still being completed. "The subcontractors became like family," Linda says. "They would let us know when they were coming and we'd leave the door open for them. It got to the point where I was making lunch for them."