The Patterson Home

The Patterson Home is the 2019 First Place Winner of the Rouleau Award for Design Excellence

When southern plantation meets industrial elegance, you will get a home unlike any other. The Southern Grace is on our farm, Acres of Grace Farms, which was passed down to us through my parents, Doug & Janie Smith, founders of Honest Abe Log Homes. This land holds our family’s heritage and is our legacy. It is the farm my dad grew up on and where he and his family of 10 farmed to survive. It’s the beginning of our story and also the start of a new generation of log home living. In 1978 Dad began making mop and broom handles. That escalated into multiple wood-related businesses.

As second-generation owners we felt it was time to expand on the way log homes have traditionally been built and move forward – first by developing a new log profile, the 10” Round, along with new design concepts. This home is the first of its kind offered through Honest Abe. While it is distinctively different in comparison to more traditional styles, it encompasses our passion for log home living. “Southern Grace” is the perfect name for this new look and feel. The home is filled with touches of all things Southern – chickens, cows, farm décor, and reflects our living on a farm and farming over 1,000 acres of row crop, cattle, home grown garden vegetables we sell to the public, along with our Southern Marketplace event held on our farm twice a year.

We love timber frame and wanted to implement it into our bedroom to have an even different look and feel from the main part of the home. We also wanted offices to be able to work from home along with a back porch with a fireplace to enjoy the view of the pasture, ponds, and woods that really ties nature and our home all in perfectly well. The catwalk ties back memories walking with dad through the mill. To achieve a high contrast color throughout the house we stained trim in Black Walnut, and the logs themselves in the kitchen were stained Gentry Grey. Counters are leathered finished granite. We went with an engineered hardwood in hickory and finished it with winter wheat throughout the house.

– April Smith Patterson

Browse our Gallery of the Patterson Home

Here are just a few of the special features and customizations the Pattersons selected, which can be seen in to photos above or on the free tour following each log raising event…

Pressed tin barrel ceiling in chrome finish; distressed finish on teal cabinets; hand carved ceiling/ light medallion in hexagonal dining room with hand carved ceiling beams in each corner; cable and metal square stock instead of typical wood balustrade on staircase and catwalk; attached garage slightly angled toward facade for 3D effect; use of chicken wire in cabinet doors; eat-in diner booth in kitchen within the cabinets; 72″ windmill fan at top of staircase; belt and pulley-driven fan between the heavy timber beams in master bedroom; the use of old barn roofing and old wood fence planks to finish out the basement ceiling and walls; American chestnut (now extinct) mantles in living room & on covered patio; metal stock and conduit railing for exterior rear deck; 35′ floor-to-ceiling stacked rock fireplace interior and exterior: popup USB charger station with outlets in kitchen island/booth; USB outlets throughout home; kitchen cabinet layout with extensive upgrades and extras; his and her home offices; master bedroom closet with built in cabinetry, dressing room and marble work service; wire baskets converted to light fixtures; hobby room; white wash and black walnut stain for heavy timber logs in the center of the home; mud room.

Tennessee Farm Bureau selected Honest Abe Log Homes as its cover story for the fall issue of Tennessee Home and Farm Magazine. Click image to read the article.

Click the postcard for full details about the barn sale.

Learn more about Acres of Grace Farms by clicking the logo above.

The story of our home…..

From the beginning we wanted our log home to be distinctive and to capture the numerous and varied aspects of what we are capable of at Honest Abe, and, really, this has turned in to so much more than just our home.

We did things in the design phase that Honest Abe doesn’t have to do on a regular basis. Construction alone was quite different because of the 10″ Round log style itself and some of the design elements that we chose to go with that are not typically selected. Check out the photos below!

The finishing phase has been exciting, and everywhere you look in the home there are things not commonly seen. Each element has its own story, some even deeply personal.

What we hope people say when they walk in the house is, “ I didn’t know that you could do this with a log home.”

We aren’t necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel, but we do hope we can show different options for those who want a log or timber frame home. Our home really does encompass design and construction elements showcasing all that we do at Honest Abe – log, timber frame, wood siding.

Our desire is that people will come to our home and leave inspired, not necessarily because of the things we did with the home but because seeing someone else think “outside the box” like we did can be very contagious. 

Our home really is now the centerpiece of our farmland here in Union Hill, Tennessee. We think it fits in perfectly. Quality is not only a hallmark of Honest Abe, it is of our Acres of Grace Farms as well. While this new home marks a new era for Honest Abe, Acres of Grace Farms is a new era for both our families’ land of which we are honored to be stewards.

Our home is unconventional and so is our farm – a very fitting pairing.

Please visit us during the Oct. 19 & 20, 2018, Barn Sale other events during 2018. When you visit, we hope you sense something different, and we hope that difference is the Lord and His Love!

– Nick and April Patterson, co-owners, Honest Abe Log Homes

Learn how the Pattersons worked with Honest Abe Interior Design Coordinator Molly Cooper to create the living space they desired, including this amazing modern farmhouse kitchen.

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