Vicki & Frank Rumfelt, of Jacksonville, FL., meet in college found they have many like interest & were married on College graduation weekend. 

Both of us were interested in logs home most of our adult lives but never spoke of it and did nothing more than admire log home pictures in magazines. It wasn’t until three years into our marriage that we found yet another common interest. We were perfectly content in our 2-story Dutch Colonial home until a memorable trip to Walt Disney World. I secretly made arrangements with Frank's work to kidnap him for our annual wedding anniversary trip. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge where we were introduced to a woodland retreat inspired by the grandeur of our National Parks of the west. We fell in love with the rustic, log-home look and our admiration grew into a dream. 

We thought we could never own something like that, so we did the next best thing. We decided to “live” that dream a few weeks each year by purchasing a Wilderness Lodge time share.  On our trips down to Disney’s Wilderness Lodge we noticed that there was a Log structure being built along the interstate in St. Augustine, FL and admired it each time we passed it. In time, Frank’s interest peaked and he made a special trip to closer look. He made several trips to watch the construction of the model home and eventually brought home plans to study and dream. 

In the meantime, while Frank dreamed, I pursued a dream of my own and got my MBA degree. Frank surprised me with an Alaskan cruise and land tour as a graduation gift. Oh my gosh! Aside from the beautiful scenery the Alaskan frontier has to offer, we saw several log homes being built with breathtaking vistas as their backdrop. The lodge at Talkeetna where we stayed had 10 or more log cabins being built. We watched them hand peeling the logs and fitting them together. We came home awe stricken and fell in love with the northwest log homes and all.  

Frank continued to visit the log home model in St. Augustine and occasionally brought home other floor plans and started reading anything he could find on log home construction. Finally, Frank was able to lure me down to the model on the pretext of a shopping excursion to the outlet malls and lunch at a restaurant next door to the model. “While we’re here why don’t we take a quick peak at the model’? About an hour and a half later, as we left, I whispered to myself ‘This kind of makes me want a new home’ That was Frank's opening signal to find some land. 

The planning started. Frank enthusiastically searched for land knowing that it would only be a matter of time, once found, that we would build a Log Home on it. He found a parcel of land in an undeveloped area just outside a State Forest Preserve. The lot is in a small subdivision, zoned agricultural, of 27 lots 2.5 to 7 acres in size. We were in the right place at the right time. Our lot was one of the nicest, is wooded, and allowed us to face the home in a direction to combat the hot afternoon Florida sun. We started to look at designs. My confidence wasn’t high. Log Homes are more costly to build, and it takes a certain type of person to like it enough to live in and see it 24/7. I wanted to be sure we really wanted to take on that kind of long term investment.

We talked about it for a long time until we realized that we had outgrown our current home. Our family had doubled after the adoption of our teen-age daughter, Melissa, and a little dog, Brewser. We also made two more visits to Alaska, reminding us of how much we like the log home rustic look and further persuaded us to proceed with our Log Home building adventure. So, we looked at more floor plans. The more floor plans we looked at, we kept coming back to the same floor plan. We really liked the first one we looked at. We worked with Suwannee River Log Homes and are building their Shenandoah floor plan with some slight modifications. Interestingly, after we chose the plan, we’ve since found out it’s their most popular floor plan that took about 5 years to perfect.

Once we had purchased the kit package we started to look for a builder. Shortly after making the purchase we ran into some good friends I have known for twenty years and had lost touch with for about a year. We meet for dinner, and they we’re taking about designing their dream home. Something sounded very familiar. Come to find out, they were designing their dream log home. They had also purchased their home from the same company and the same sales representative and were using the same lending institution. We were scheduled to start building first, but injuries from a car accident and the “hurricane of the week” summer 2004 damaged our current home and delayed our build by almost a year. Our friends started before us and because of our delays we lamented to them that we have to find a new builder. By a chance of fate, they connected us with their builder, JoJac Enterprises who happen to have an opening and could start almost immediately.