When I was a newlywed, the wife and I considered building a log house. I had a day off from work and drove to a log building company to look at their HQ which was their demo. It was early morning when I got there and it was easy to see sunlight between the butt joints on the eastern wall. Decided then and there that a log kit was a no go.
My observation is that most log homes are built by stick builders who have no concept of how log building is different. I had a lady at work who had a log house built. The house had a cathedral ceiling and soon the walls were being forced outward because the builder had not tied the opposing walls together. The builder's fix was to run a threaded rod through the top run of logs and torque the walls back into plumb. The builder also did not build any settlement space into the walls. Soon the sliding glass door was jammed shut and several windows were bound up by the pressure.
