Business adds log cabin repair to its repertoire

Jim Zacharias and crew are adding log cabin repair to their suite of custom milling options. KATY NESBITT - The Observer

Jayzee Lumber of Joseph continues to add to its suite of products and services; its latest, log home repair including custom chinking and log replacement.

Three years ago, Jim Zacharias built his first log cabin prototype and has been experimenting ever since. Through word of mouth the company has grown to not only building the kits, but constructing many of them on-site, keeping two full-time employees busy and two more are needed during the summer season.

The very first cabin Zacharias built was his own home, visible from his sawmill on the former Boise Cascade mill site. The house has become a showroom for his work and gives people an idea of the open beam design. 

Beams are difficult to source and expensive, so he chooses his own still standing in the woods and sometimes logs them himself from local, private lots like the RY Timber land scattered around the county.

He uses ponderosa pine and spruce, logs that conventional sawmills don’t want, but provide the strength and beauty for his custom cabins he makes with square logs instead of the typical Swedish cope style.

“Those kind are specialized and expensive. We make cabins for the average working guy from small diameter, bug-killed spruce and ponderosa pine,” said Zacharias.

Jayzee hand hews the squared beams with a planer that gives the timbers a textured look.

Zacharias said he got into repairing cabins when he started working on his own and quickly Zayzee was expanding its offerings. The mill is a distributor of Weather All Products, stains and chinking made especially for cabins so doing the repair work was a natural expansion.

Zacharias never bores doing just one thing – lately arches over driveways are all the rage while other customers want lumber for irrigation ditch bridges. On his lot, a pile of planks are awaiting installation over a creek in the wilderness.

“Everything we make is custom, so we don’t have stockpiles,” said Zacharias.