Buyers looking for longevity, luxury log home maker says

At Durfeld Log & Timber, owner Ric Durfeld says his focus on value is keeping the company strong during hard times.

Durfeld is in the log-home manufacturing business, taking raw logs from the forest and turning them into architectural masterpieces that he believes will stand for hundreds of years.

Located near the Cariboo town of Williams Lake, he buys high-valued old-growth cedar logs from the coastal rainforest and transports them to Williams Lake, where his crew of eight to 10 craftsmen turn them into hand-built designer homes. He does four to seven projects a year.

All around him at Williams Lake, sawmills are going down, shedding thousands of workers. The American home-building industry is flat on its back, and demand for construction lumber -- the mainstay of the B .C. forest industry -- has dried up.

Yet the market for Durfeld's homes has remained strong, something he attributes to their value: When times are tough, Durfeld has found that people tend to seek long-term value over short-lived products. Durfeld strives to provide that value.

"It seems this downturn right now is not really affecting us at all. We are looking at one of the busier years that we have had in the past few," he said in an interview. "We were struggling more a few years ago with the impact of the strong dollar than we are during the downturn right now.

"When there is a downturn in the economy, that's when some people look to shop. It's not just because we have rock-bottom prices. It's because people begin to think more about the value in something that lasts longer."

Durfeld is passionate about adding value, to the point where it's a guiding business and moral principle for him -- seeing the true value in the land and forests and then adding to it through craftsmanship. He acknowledges the old-growth cedar logs he uses have a high value to the forest if they are left standing. But he also believes that such valuable wood can and should be used to make something equally valuable and enduring.

"It's about recognizing a far greater value in the forest industry, and looking more at the forest, not just with logging and sawmilling in mind."

Durfeld pays $300 a cubic metre for cedar logs that can be more than 500 years old. Taking something from the forest that has such high value -- not only in terms of dollars but in beauty as well -- demands that he create even higher value from it, something that will endure as long as the wood remains sound.

"Things that don't last, that we don't build with value, end up in a landfill an awful lot of the time."

(prepared by Gord Hamilton/Vancouver Sun)