Building a Rainbow - part 2

On choosing wood as a building material, we had entered the maze like world of timber frame construction or solid log. If we chose logs, should they be round ones, square cut, laminated or plain and what thickness should they be? There was a bewildering variety. Why is it that initially choices look to be so simple but the more you delve into them, the more complicated and difficult they become?
At the outset, we had discounted a timber frame house as the feeling was that we would lose a lot of the style we had initially fallen in love with. We wanted wood with a capital W and frame houses normally had most of their internal walls constructed from sheetrock. We had also stayed several times in a log house belonging to a friend in Virginia, USA and loved the ambiance of the natural wood - the air inside the house always seemed so much fresher and sweeter smelling and there was just something essentially pleasing about living in a building that was so naturally at one with the environment. After all, we told ourselves, one of our main aims was to make this house as ecologically sound as we were able.
With these thoughts reverberating through our heads, we had started off by spending weeks trekking round our region visiting constructors and suppliers and had become more than a little disheartened with exorbitant prices, vague delivery dates and quotes that never arrived. Disillusionment had set in and we had been about to give up on the whole idea when we saw a TV program devoted to a self-build project which was actually being constructed in the UK with logs from Finland. The house looked wonderful, the price was good and the presenter assured our eager audience of two that Finnish timber was infinitely superior to that grown in more temperate latitudes. Furthermore, the forests that provided the timber were managed and sustainable. We were transfixed as the program showed the owner of the house discussing his plans directly with the suppliers at their factory in Finland. Wow! That could be us we thought.