*LOG HOUSE *

 In old times, people used to build rather quickly. For example, the Church of the Savior-ordinary in Vologda was built and consecrated in one day. A year and a half after the frequent fires were rebuilt, entire large villages. People didn't spare wood. Men slept well only in winter, and the axes were sharpened more often than they took a steam bath.
     A characteristic feature of the Northern wooden architecture is that any building (church, house, barn, bathhouse) can be taken apart piece by piece and thus be transported from place to place, and damaged or rotted logs can be replaced. Some existing houses were rebuilt three or four times, and you can say without exaggeration that they have kept details, made during the times of Ivan the Terrible. If they are under the roof and ventilated, thin, oblique, pitch-covered logs are virtually stayed forever, while the imperfect logs go bad after five or six years. Consequently, the quality of the wood was valued for construction.
     It is known that a felled tree cannot touch the soil because it immediately starts to rot. A material force that coupled the wooden structure and the earth served by either stone or sometimes resin or burnt stump of thick trees, not prone to measurable decay.
     If you put on four stones dug into the ground two logs and cut out logs ends and put on first two another two, you get the square, called the log foundation. The diagonal distances between inner opposite edges were measured to make the corners straight. They must be the same.
 The log cabin grew up row by row. At the bottom of the following log was carved a hollow using the axe as per the upper part of the lower trunk. To do this, the high beam was marked. Two good carpenters cut down five or six rows a day, which amounted to half of the average log cabin height.

 Logs were rolled up to the wall on the rails with ropes.

 The most straightforward log cabin is a timber shed or a hayloft with no floor or ceiling. The logs' surface wasn't made even, so the wind penetrated the cracks, and the hay was dry. That kind of building was cut on the spot. The house was not disassembled, whereas the log cabin intended to retain warmth. Logs were marked by the numbers, then rolled out and connected using the moss. "How many guests, so many beds," - said in a riddle. A moss layer was stacked the entire length of two adjacent logs and was clamped down by two subsequent logs.
 It was impossible to build a log house when the weather was windy, as the moss gasket was blown away from the logs. A settled-down log house becomes much lower because the moss is compressed. "If not for the wedge or for the moss - and a carpenter would have croaked," - says the proverb.