There may be more cabins around than people realize.
My grandparents’ house began as a one-room cabin around 1850. At some point, it was jacked up and a cellar was dug, At that time, they covered the logs with clapboard siding and cut holes for windows. A few years later, a second floor was added, then they started expanding back.
Until some time around WWII, the only heat was a stove. When they installed a furnace, only the newer parts of the house were heated, which is less than pleasant in Wisconsin. The house is still occupied.
It may not be common in Tennessee, but in Wisconsin, I have encountered quite a few farm houses like this that grew from cabins.
It is very common here in Iowa. My dad was at an old steam engine show and they had on display the old country school he’d attended for awhile.
Except at the time it was brick. Doing some repairs or something they discovered the old log structure underneath. The basement of my girlfriend’s place is made of river rock, which dates it to at least the Civil War. There are some amazing old treasures out there.
My first wife grew up in such a house in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Unfortunately, less-than-Code wiring did it in. Her stepfather nearly pumped the well dry trying to save the place, but the combination of well-dried timbers, a brisk winter wind, and the eventual burning out of the electrical wires which ran the pump sealed the house’s fate.
Some log cabins were “sheathed” when built. The cabin in the article linked below has, as is typical, an old section and a new section. From what I could tell, the old section was originally not sheathed but when the addition was built both were covered on the outside. You can see in the interior shots that the logs were not plastered or covered over on the inside of the walls; they were simply painted white.
http://www.backcountrynotes.com/history/2009/8/28/frontier-culture-museum-1850-american-farm.html