So my husband strikes again I'm afraid. The contractor put some natural wood around one side of the doorway that came very close to matching the other side. I was planning to just leave it natural, but while I was at work my husband told the contractor to stain it this dark color (I think this is revenge for not having the stained accent wall!). I don't hate the color but now I'm stuck with deciding how much of the original woodwork to stain so it doesn't look stupid. Do I just stain the inside of the doorway? I feel like it's one of those things that one you start, it's hard to know where to stop. I was thinking maybe stain the perimeter of the logs that the vertical beams go into? Any advice? Besides getting a good divorce attorney!

I'm going to look at this from a slightly different perspective: Sometimes being forced to sell a property like this is a blessing in disguise. We sometimes become so attached to our family after they are gone that we forget to live our OWN lives. apple_pie_order said it, don't spend your life trying to make dead people happy. It's ok to have some sentimental attachments. It's not ok when those attachments have us making bad life decisions. Keeping this house would be a bad life decision on multiple fronts: 1. You clearly can't afford to buy-out the co-owner and the extensive repairs that are needed. No shame or blame, but it's good to have a clear-headed idea of the total cost of keeping this home vs your resources. 2. The neighborhood has changed so completely that it's no longer hospitable for that property. 3. There is no longer any "intrinsic value" in the house as a log cabin. It has been so re-muddled and architecturally bastardized that the only value is the novelty of saying "there's a log cabin under all that". I know this is a shock to you, but it wasn't "lovingly restored..." what was done was a "modernization / re-muddle" job. A log cabin was turned into a 1950-60's suburban house complete with an attached garage and kitschy lawn decor. This was the style of that time and what the owners wanted. It's cute and has character - but it's not a "lovingly restored log cabin" by any stretch of the imagination. 4. Keeping the house would require major changes / sacrifices to your life: You would have to live with mold/decay/structural dysfunction or you would need to make life changes to create the income to rehab it. If you don't sell, those are your choices. It's not rent-able as-is either. 5. I feel pretty certain that this property would not ever be viable financially as a single family home. Investing in repairs and maintenance would not ever result in a property that would appreciate and be marketable at some point in the future. It will always be a tear-down. 6. The co-ownership has created a potential legal minefield (see below). 7. Most of all, I think the weight of the sentimental attachment, and the history behind the will and how that went down, is crippling you.

Just be sure you do not use a moisture barrier on your wood subfloor. There are some good foam and felt underlayment without moisture barrier, but some vinyl products don’t like an underlayment. Adding an underlayment to flooring that already has one attached can void your warranty. Read the installation and warranty instructions carefully BEFORE you buy the flooring so you know what you’re dealing with. Also, make sure your second floor boards are secure. You don’t want anyone falling through if they’re separating. You might also think about adding half inch plywood to your upstairs area to be floored. That won’t take away much height, but it will help with noise, dirt and light from filtering down to your lower area. I think the humidifier might be a good idea, too as the shrinkage is probably caused by low humidity. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I have a log-sided home and would love to see what you've got! But -- when you say "modern" -- what exactly do you mean by that? If you mean updating/re-decorating in line with the flavor of the home that's one thing, but if you mean sleek design/metal-glass-steel looks = no, no and a thousand times NO! Log homes are easy in the sense that they are telling you what they want to be.