Hand-Crafted Home

Doug Wirt has built not just the log cabin he calls home, but also unique furniture

There truly is no place like your home. Each of us has our own unique style, which comes out in our homes to various degrees. For Doug Wirt, home is a log cabin that he built outside of Ravenna.

Inspired by the cozy comfort of cabins he had seen when traveling, Wirt set about building his dream home in 1991. Resting on five acres of land, the 1,864–square-foot cabin has a full basement, four bedrooms, a loft and a high-pitched roof that dramatically opens up the space. “[The house itself] has a pretty basic design, but it has a high-pitched roof so that, when you walk in, it’s very open. That’s what I wanted. I wanted roominess,” says Wirt.

Originally from Northeast Ohio, Wirt left home and worked on a farm in Michigan as a young man. With a chuckle, he recounts memories of hard work that established a work ethic that he carries forward today. “It was a great education for me, with a lot of long hours,” says Wirt. He returned to the Akron area to help with his father’s business and later, run it. Currently, Wirt is the owner of Mascon Equipment. Combining the work ethic he learned on the farm and his construction background from his business, Wirt decided to design and build his own home. “It got to a point where I was renting, and I started looking for property. I have drafting skills and I said “I can design a house.” So I spent a year and a half researching — I’m in the construction field so I had a lot of contractors that I asked a lot of questions.”

Step by step Wirt began planning his home. He reached out to a company in Montana for the logs. “I did all of the designs and then sent those plans to a company, like an architect, and they go to a mill that mills the logs,” says Wirt. Once the plans were ready to go, the supplies were sent to Wirt and he began the construction of the cabin. Utilities were contracted out, but the main bulk of the construction was completed by Wirt himself. It took about three years for the majority of the work to be completed.

The hard work was worth it for Wirt who still loves his home years later. “Sitting in a log house with the fire burning, you can’t ask for a more comfortable esthetic setting.”

The cabin is not the only thing that Wirt has hand-crafted. He also designs beautifully unique pieces of furniture out of a wood called twisted juniper. This artistic pursuit is one that began while on his honeymoon with his wife, local singer Helen Welch, in Michigan. On their way home, the couple stumbled upon a piece of practical art. “We were passing a place and it had all of this wooden stuff sitting out along the road. We pulled in and there was a guy making this furniture using this type of wood.” With the addition of one very unique dinning table, Wirt and his wife returned home, where he began to utilize the twisted pieces of juniper in furniture creations.

His side business, called Twisted Wood Designs, is still in its infancy. Each piece of what he calls practical art, takes it’s own shape. Wirt’s process for each creation begins with an idea of what he wants to build. “It involves a lot of wine, my stool in the basement, and an idea—if I want to come up with a table or a chair, I need an objective to start with. Then I just start laying all this wood out and start talking to it, looking at it, laying it down, turning it around and putting it upside down. Whatever you can do to start getting a plan to put it together,” says Wirt.

Each whimsical piece is more than just an expression of an artistic idea. It serves a real purpose within Wirt’s home and the homes of those who purchase the pieces. “I like the idea of functional art. I like painting things, but I like when people can feel, touch, sit in, walk around a piece of art,” says Wirt.

Together, his home and the functional art within it create a place that is truly home to him. “A house should make a statement about yourself. That’s the one thing I have strived for. People think that a big house is making a statement—I think it’s more your living space than what you’re trying to show off to the neighbors.”