This Realtor® Lives in a 90-Year-Old Log Cabin

Sometimes Realtors® help clients buy and sell unique homes, but Sylvia Hess-Albright, a member of the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors®, lives in one that you won’t see on the market very often.

Hess-Albright’s cabin when it was being built originally.

Hess-Albright and her husband live in a log cabin that was built in 1934. The couple bought the property in 2016 from the daughter of the man who originally built it. The cabin’s logs, stones and other building materials came directly from the more-than-three-acre property, which, at the time it was built, was a cozy home with two bedrooms. The original owners of the cabin raised their three children there.

Around the late 1940s, an additional bedroom and a bathroom were added for a total of about 1,200 square feet. In subsequent years, the owners completed basic upgrades including a new metal roof and windows. However, when Hess-Albright and her husband bought it (the cabin’s first owners outside the original family), they still had their work cut out for them.

“It’s really been a labor of love getting it the way we wanted it,” Hess-Albright says, recalling how the original owners did minimal upgrades over the years. Since buying it, she and her husband have completed their own upgrades and maintenance to the cabin, including painting the exterior logs, upgrading the electricity and redoing the interior to fit their own style and needs.

Most people who visit her house comment on how “cozy” it is, and Hess-Albright herself says it has a “cottage-type feel.” While it may be too small or old for many people’s tastes, she and her husband love their home.

“Based on size and maintenance required, a lot of people wouldn’t be interested in a log home,” she says. “It isn’t for most people, but it’s perfect for us.”

Her favorite part of living in a 90-year-old log cabin is coming home every day to its comfort and knowing all the hard work she and her husband put into it to make it theirs. She enjoys sitting outside on the porch, warming by the fireplace inside and listening to the stream and the birds on the property.

Are you a Realtor® living in a unique home? Contact Hope Walborn ([email protected]) to share more about it.