Text Box: The paint scheme the chose is very natural feeling
Text Box: Aluminum balusters and copper post caps
Text Box: This whole unit is called a ‘bent’
Text Box: These are hammer beam bents
Text Box: Notice the site built truss in the gable end
Text Box: Fiber cement siding and artificial stacked rock
Text Box: Screened porch made from local oak timbers
Text Box: Outdoor fireplace - stainless
Text Box: Great room fireplace with cedar mantle
Text Box: In Progress - A timber frame home is an amazing piece of craftsmanship. The posts and beams are constructed in a far off factory and shipped to the job site on a tractor trailer. Four guys, a bunch of pegs (no screws or nails), some hammers, a crane and a couple days later and the raising is complete. It’s quite an event and we had lots of visitors watching. 
Add a manufactured wall and roof system (structural insulated panels or SIPs) and the whole house is under roof in about ten days. The SIPs are two pieces of OSB with a thick layer of insulation in between. Once it’s all put together, all the joints are sealed and the home becomes very ‘tight’ and therefore energy efficient. The house is so tight that we had to add a fresh air ventilator to bring outside air into the house.
While the inside of the home is spectacular with all the exposed posts, beams and joinery, once the house is completed, it’s hard to tell from the outside that it’s post and beam construction. So we added some decorative trusses on the front and rear and also built the entire screened porch out of timbers. But rather than ordering these timbers from the factory, we had them made locally (a sawmill cut them for us and we took them to a shop to have them dressed and we cut all the joinery and installed). It was a fun project.
I could go on and on about the nice features of this house (like the rain chains for gutters or the outdoor kitchen area or the slate porches or the beautiful curbless showers), but I’ll add more later when we get the house finished and have more pictures to show.
For more on timber frame construction, visit our Timber Frame page.
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Text Box: It only took three days to raise the entire structure