For many years the building remained completely unremarkable.
At first glance, the building with its faded yellow siding, located at the end of Atlantis Drive in Youngstown, looks like any other home.
But for decades, hidden beneath its worn exterior walls was a log building, likely built in the late 1790s or early 1800s, that offered a glimpse of its former beauty.
For owners Mike and Sharon Repko, the historic property has been a labor of love.
The Repkos bought the property 30 years ago, and their current home, which is 13 years old, is just a stone’s throw from the log structure.
“We found it by chance,” Mike says, “There was siding there, and we were renting a house there, and this guy trashed it. We wanted to do the inside, and Sharon peeled back some of the plaster and we saw the logs. Sharon’s been passionate about log building ever since she retired, and we didn’t want to throw anything away.”
The couple hasn’t rented out the property for about 15 years, but it’s been at least six years since they first noticed it was a log home.
Bob Reintgen usually needs no introduction.
He relies on word of mouth and never advertises his work.
A quick online search will bring up a variety of hits.
“No modifications or alterations whatsoever…”
“We are committed to preserving historic Westmoreland log buildings…”
“Restoration of Apollo’s Historic Drake Log Cabin Completed…”
Reintgen, a former teacher in the Derry Area School District, is a historic preservationist who is now retired from his teaching career and has helped restore, and sometimes relocate, dozens of log buildings.
“Renovation is one of the cardinal sins,” he said, noting that “rehabilitation” was the key word. “The U.S. government has standards for the rehabilitation of historic buildings, which is a long and tedious process, but essentially the aim is to preserve old buildings. That’s my passion. Otherwise, old buildings would be demolished and replaced with wooden buildings that don’t last.”
Another important piece of the puzzle is keeping structures in their original locations and maintaining the community’s historic footprint.
“Youngstown is the oldest town in Westmoreland County and this building is one of the original farm buildings in Youngstown, so having this building in front of this beautiful home is very important to the recovery,” Reintgen said. “Youngstown was a log cabin town. They demolished one log cabin across from the fire station about five years ago and the other one went to Ohio.”
Another important consideration, Leintgen said, is the materials used in the renovation project. In some cases, materials from the original design may become so worn and weathered that they are no longer usable at all and must be replaced.
“It’s probably too old and wet to be usable,” Leintgen said. “If there’s anything from the original building that we can’t use, like the log that goes across our heads in the building. About 2.5 feet was fine, about 3.5 feet was fine, but the log in the middle, which was just an inch left of a 10-inch-thick log, had rotted away and there was almost nothing left. We had to saw it down, build the building in between, and make our magic happen.”
But not all buildings stay in place: commercial development sometimes forces buildings to be demolished and rebuilt elsewhere.
“We’ve done it many times before to demolish buildings,” Reintgen said of past projects. “If we can’t keep it there, we’re OK with moving it. There are lots of reasons why that might happen, like a highway coming through. We just can’t keep it there.”
He pointed to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior’s standards for the treatment of historic buildings, which prescribe preservation, restoration, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
“This is the ultimate act of recycling,” Leintgen points out. “We dismantle each log, label everything, make diagrams of it, and then later reassemble it in the new location.”
He has done this exercise many times.
Leintgen’s picturesque Derry Township farm features four relocated log buildings from the 1800s.
“I took buildings that were no longer needed, dismantled them, labeled them, drew plans for them, trucked them in, put them on the ground and reassembled them just like they were built in the 1800s,” he said.
Historic change
The Repkos met with Leintgen in December 2023. It was a perfect match.
“The quality of our workforce is way ahead of schedule,” Leintgen said during an initial meeting with The Bulletin in late February. “We have people who have worked on projects like this many times. Some of them have been my friends since high school 50 years ago. These are people I have strong ties to. I don’t have to rely on luck or leave things to chance. I know they’re top notch and that gives me peace of mind.”
The first step was to carry out a general clean-up inside and around the site before demolition crews could enter the site.
“We peeled back all the yellow vinyl siding and the vertical wood siding, which had two layers,” Leintgen recalls. “We were peeling back layers, and in a way it was a good thing that this happened over time, because the log building was like putting a turtle shell on top of the first layer, and then we put another layer of protection on top of that.”
“That’s what’s helped protect them from the snow, rain and wind over time. Log buildings haven’t always been around. But it’s a lot of work to remove the insulbrick and the cracked vinyl and wood siding and hammer in hundreds of nails with a crowbar.”
The original building, built over 200 years ago, had an extension that was in poor condition and in need of restoration.
“The area where the kitchen, bathroom and laundry are was spongy and in terrible condition because they didn’t use good quality wood like chestnut or oak logs, so we had to tear down the whole addition to get to the core,” Reintgen said. “It was just poorly built and not up to code. Also, it was built on flat stone, so we had to build foundations underneath it, and that part was floating at the frost line. So we had to take out the whole addition and dig up the old foundations around there.”
Workers demolished the entire building, demolishing the kitchen and bathrooms as well as the porch, which had been decaying.
By late February, the framing of the new porch was complete, and a new roof was installed over the original structure, addition and porch.
“There are many different phases to this project and they’ve been happy with every step of it,” Leintgen said of Repko. “When the roof was installed it was a very happy moment.”
During a site visit by The Bulletin on Feb. 29, the exterior was still bare, with wire mesh stretched over the gaps between the logs. The wire mesh will later be covered with new gap fill, a material similar to cement mortar that helps keep weather from seeping into the log building and also helps drain water away from around the building.
“The interior is really interesting because, whereas with wood construction there’s a 16-inch gap vertically, the logs are not 2-inch by 6-inch, but 8-inch by 10-inch solid chestnut or oak,” Leintgen says. “This virgin wood is different from the logs we cut out of the forests today, because they’re laid lengthwise, not horizontally; so instead of 16 inches, they’re laid across.”
“You run the wires along the door frame and put all the outlets at the height of the gap fill line. Then you run the wires wherever you want in the room, with the lights at eye level and the outlets below. You can wire these buildings just like you would a wood-frame building. It just takes a little imagination to flip a building upside down.”
Eastern hemlock is the state tree of Pennsylvania, so it is used as the primary source of stud lumber throughout the building.
“This building is just so solid and sturdy and beautiful, and you get the sense that you’re handing it over to the next generation, so that it will hopefully last 100, 150, hopefully 200 years from now,” Reintgen said. “We’re old guys in our 60s, trying our best, but ultimately this building will be passed on to their children and grandchildren.”
The log home stands on the same lot as their current home, and the Repkos have enjoyed watching the historic structure progress piece by piece.
“It was fun to watch the workers,” Sharon said. “The Mennonites built the porch and the Amish built the roof. They worked really well together.”
“We’re learning a lot,” Mike said. “Bob found a fireplace downstairs. Apparently in the basement they used to cook in there.”
Leintgen began removing some of the loose stones around the cavity and decided it would be a good idea to restore the fireplace as well.
“They’re not going to use the fireplace, but we hollowed out the cavity and reassembled everything,” Leintgen said.
He also gave Sharon an old cast iron skillet to display.
“My wife is concerned that I’m keeping so much of it and asks if I should donate it or take it apart and melt it down because it’s metal,” Leintgen said. “I do a lot of work at historical sites, so I always assumed there would be a fireplace at a historical site somewhere and I kept it. This fireplace came up in conversation, and Sharon was very kind, so she brought it here as a gift. It needs cleaning, but it’s beautiful.”
During a site visit by the Bulletin in early May, the nearly finished product was unveiled.
The new front porch runs the entire length of the original building and addition. Workers installed new windows and filled gaps between the logs.
“It’s a lot of work, but as they say, when they found out it was made of logs, they were passionate about it, and I have a passion for preserving these old buildings,” said Leintgen, whose 42nd historic building is the one he’s helped restore.
“This happens so many times,” he says, “when people start remodeling and find a house that needs windows removed and some walls replaced, they see the core of a log cabin.”
To historic preservationists, it’s like discovering buried treasure.
“It’s just amazing,” Reintgen said. “These logs are chestnut and oak, virgin wood, so they were big trees when they were cut down in the 1700s. They had probably been growing for 100 years by the time they were cut down.”
Leintgen and the Repkos said they hope the building will serve as a history lesson and a bright spot for Youngstown in the future.
“To me, and here in western Pennsylvania, these log cabins and post-and-beam barns are pyramids,” Reintgen said. “We should treasure them, preserve them and do all we can to pass the baton to the next generation. Remnants of the 1780s are still all around us, you can read books about them or have someone give you a lecture, but when you see these old buildings, especially in Youngstown, there’s a real sense of historic architecture.
“There are some simply beautiful buildings here, and this is one of them. I think when this building is completed, the whole area will ride that wave to the beach. I think it will liven up the whole area a little bit.”
“It’s amazing what they’re doing. It’s the ultimate restoration, leaving the building in its original place and telling its historical story. When you walk down the street, it’s like you’re seeing people in the 1800s.”
