As we looked to restore the cabin, we had quite a few needs for different species, finishes, and types of wood. The exterior siding on the cabin was a mix of different log siding with different profiles and different colors. Some repaired areas didn’t match up at all and some areas had different size logs.

The interior was tongue and groove pine paneling. A lot of it was water damaged or had “issues.” No drywall was going to be making its way into the cabin, so we had our work cut out for us to find some good wood.

Cedar Log Exterior
For the exterior, we chose white cedar “half log” siding with the same profile as the full logs as the old cabin. We looked at the fake log products (concrete-type logs) but didn’t like the color profiles and the expense put them at 2-3x the cost of real wood. Yes, they would be maintenance free, but yes, they also looked like fake logs.

White cedar was chosen for its overall look, stainability, and rot resistance. We sourced this from Northern Log Supply in Michigan who provided us with the half logs for the exterior, 4×4 square trim for the windows, and pine log siding for the exterior walls in the interior. Northern Log Supply came through with four huge pallets of timber in under two weeks which we then let rest and acclimate in the garage until it was ready for install.

Pine Tongue and Groove Interior
The interior walls needed to be pine tongue and groove paneling, to match what was done in other parts of the cabin. With over 1200 square feet of interior wall and ceiling space to cover in wood, we needed to have a plan of sorts. Buying T&G from the local supply yard would have been fine, but then we would have spent weeks on staining and clear coating a ton of wood at the job site before we installed it.

After looking around at the various vendors for pre-finished T&G paneling, we settled on Duragroove. We were looking for a few basics with the T&G paneling:

  • A color profile that would match close to other areas of the cabin (Chestnut)
  • Low or no VOCs in the finish as we would be surrounding ourselves in wood in our bedrooms and didn’t need to be breathing in crap for the next year as other finishes off-gassed.
  • High quality finishing with tight tolerances for the tongues and grooves
  • The ability to get to product within 2-3 weeks of ordering

After we received samples of the Duragroove paneling, it was easy to see that they hit all of the items above. A great finish that they say is UV cured after 20, yes, 20 different sanding steps. The tongues and grooves clicked together like Lego block due to their machining process. And after ordering, our 3000 pounds of pine paneling were shipped within 4 days. So, we are anxious to get the paneling up as soon as it arrives to continue the build out process.