Fax: (301) 540-8112
Chinking Installation, Repair & Painting
We offer a full range of chinking services including installation, repair, and painting.
Chinking Installation, Repair & Painting
Would you like your chinking to be a different color?
Chinking Installation, Repair & Painting
We offer a full range of chinking services, including interior services and historic repair work.
Listen To Our Customers
Click here to watch this homeowner describe their experience with our company.
Chinking Installation, Repair & Painting
Repair work? Yes, we can do that.
Chinking Installation, Repair & Painting
We offer a full range of chinking services for historic homes including log replacement and chinking repair.
Facts About Chinking and Caulking Log Homes & Log Cabins
Chinking is the gritty, mortar-like material seen between courses of logs on many log homes and log cabins. Modern chinking is a flexible, mortar textured sealant. Log home chinking can be a necessity or simply an aesthetic addition to a log home’s or log cabin’s appearance. Chinking the logs stops air and moisture infiltration into your home, making the home more energy efficient and reducing entry points for insects. You may also use chinking or caulking to energy seal any gaps between logs and notches that have settled and formed gaps overtime. A special material should be used on log checking and chinking and standard caulk are not appropriate to fill log home and log cabin checking.
Traditionally log home and log cabin chinking was once a mixture of clay, lime, and sand with variations based on what was locally available. Old fashioned log home chinking often fails by pulling away from logs and cracks, allowing water and insects to enter the logs. Today material are flexible and made of acrylic elastomeric compounds that adhere to the logs and can stretch and flex as the logs settle and move during seasonal expansion and contraction.
Many hand-crafted log homes and log cabins not built in a scribe-fit style are referred to as chink style log homes or chinked. Several milled log home manufacturers also offer log home packages that require chinking. These homes are built leaving gaps between the courses of logs where the chinking may be installed. The gaps are typically created with small spacer blocks that help hold the logs apart. At the corners the logs are held apart by the notches (usually round or dovetailed notches). When the log shell is constructed generally a backer rod (or equivalent) is pushed between the courses of logs and then a chinking compound is applied both inside and outside of the home.
It is important to make sure that any chinking or caulk that is installed on your log home is compatible with the finish on your logs in order to avoid incompatibility issues. For more information about chinking or caulking (energy sealing) your home please contact our office. We offer a full range of services from historic chinking repair and replacement to new chinking installation or repair of elastomeric chinking, to energy sealing, and also check filling. If you want to change the color of your chinking without the expense of total replacement, let us know. We also offer log home chinking painting services.
