About Us
Over the past 40 years of designing and building for clients from Japan to Alaska, to Telluride, and seaside in Florida, I have seen many challenges and always chose to view them as opportunities. Some of these challenges took shape in my mind when listening to my clients requests for something rare... something that you don’t see anywhere else. The resulting systems met those challenges and more. We perfected Schafer System’s with each new Edgewood project until I was confident that they were ready to be shared. Previously only available in an Edgewood home, I now offer the four, most impactful of these building systems in a factory-direct environment through Big Cabin Log & Timber.
A few of the 800+ Projects
completed in the U.S. and japan
Breckenridge
Durango
Lake Tahoe
Park City
Payson
Steamboat
Whitefish
Coeur d' Alene
Denver
Salt Lake City
Seattle
Bend
Portland
Sun Valley
Sandpoint
Anchorage
SENDAI
NIIGATA
MYOKO
YAMANASHI
NAGOYA
kyoto
saitama
Brian Schafer
Founder and CEO
All of the experiences throughout my 40-year career, whether positive or negative, have allowed me to arrive where I am now. I founded Big Cabin on the principals of innovation, challenging the status quo and striving to produce the absolute best architectural solutions. Crafting extraordinary homes is a passion we will continue for decades to come.
More about Brian
Milan Brodina
Project Management
Lead Designer & CAD Technician
When I graduated with a Master Degree in Wood Engineering I made a life-changing decision to travel all the way to the United States and apprentice with Brian Schafer of Edgewood Log Homes. The passion I have for log and timber home construction grew deeply over my two-year internship with Edgewood.
Learning the complexities of roofing design and construction was incredibly intensive and the time I spent working side-by-side with Brian Schafer, invaluable to my career.
The opportunity to work with the log building luminaries Graeme D. Mould and Robert Chambers of Natural Log Homes greatly impacted my skill levels and experience.
When Natural Log Homes began generating more sales and increased their production in the international, log home market I was promoted to Production and Project Manager.
Responsibilities included overseeing day-to-day operations at the log building yard, meeting and liaising with clients, product & material development, and consulting with key architects and engineers.
I stayed in touch with Brian over the years and always remembered what he had shared with me.
Aging log crafters would make great log home CAD drafters Brian would say, and so with no formal schooling in architecture I set out to teach myself everything I could learn about CAD.
Max Krieger
Production Foreman
39 years ago I began working with Brian at Log Home Logs before it was Edgewood. Over the years I have been trusted to work in every operational and production position Edgewood offers, spanning operations to quality control. By way of example, over 50 different homes to Japan and twelve 10,000 SF full log buildings for a project at 11,000’ elevation in Telluride, CO, all crafted and shipped under my watch and all with no call backs, that makes me proud….. not just of myself but of my staff.
Living in rural Idaho and having been fortunate enough to do what I love over these many years is truly a gift.
I am an avid hunter and fisherman and actively share my outdoor lifestyle with my my friends and family members. I am passionate about passing on my many years of knowledge and appreciation of the wild to future generations.
Brian Smith
Brian started his log home career in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley at the age of 20 at Alpine Log Homes, in 1988. He worked his way into a crew leadership position before moving to Pioneer Log Homes, but was injured on an out of state re-assembly of a 10,000 sq ft home in rural Colorado; the log truss that toppled onto him left him with several broken bones and multiple surgeries. Determined not to be beaten, after a year and a half of aggressive training and physical therapy, he went back into a career in log & timber; after some more pre-building experience, he switched to on-site work as a traveling log home re-assembly professional/crew trainer, and spent several years teaching crews around the US the “tricks of the trade”. In 1998, for instance, Brian would step foot in 28 states and 8 countries in the course of that job description, and has built log and timber structures across the US and France.
In 1999, Brian was offered a sales and project management position by Neville Log Homes, an industry leader at that time. He has been doing sales and project management of log and timber projects ever since, utilizing his years log and timber construction and traveling field assembly experience to assist clients and builders through the entire process of their log or timber home, and brings that experience to the Big Cabin team.
