Overall the most striking aspect of a replicated Virginia house frame is the abundance in the size and number of timbers.

I designed this frame based upon historic standards of houses built 200 years ago in Virginia. The building inspections office still insisted upon having an engineers stamp on the plans, so I brought one in. His report stated that this frame was somewhere between 5 to 10 times stronger than needed. And that is one of the main reasons houses built this way still stand centuries later.

Some of the details that I’d like to point out in this photo is the number and size of the rafters (Virginians don’t scrimp) (no Yankee purlins to be found). And, notice some of the joinery, like the beam the rafters are setting on has a scarf joint in it to create a beam long enough to span the length of the house. And finally, how all the horizontal members are “shouldered” into the posts.

I could look at this photo all day, but then, I’m just wood junkie.

Ted Benson, noted author, has put together an attractive book on timber frames but, he is a New Englander, as most timber framers are. There is no regional author/expert from the Virginia/Carolina area to rise up and bring our work to public awareness. It’s a shame, Virginia is loaded with historic timber framed homes from the 1700’s and early 1800’s. New England frames are mostly built with a “bent” method and Benson writes as if that is the only way to build a timber frame but I’ve never seen a bent built Virginia frame.

All the frames I’ve encountered in Va, whether they are two stories tall or one, have been laid out such that there is a center hall and a room on each side. Sometimes the home is larger such as a four over four, but you will have the same center hall, and sometimes one of the center walls is eliminated to make for a large room and small room with eliminating the center hall, but all of the above are framed the same way. This results in having eight main supporting posts for the house, the four outside corners and the four corner posts of the central hall… these are key posts. Next in importance would be the posts on each side of the doors, windows and chimneys, while not holding up the house they are important for added strength. After these any further framing is entirely to add nailers to hold up plaster.

Originally posted 2015-02-04 15:49:18.

The most prominent feature of a Virginia timber-frame is the corners where you will find huge “hog trough” posts with angle bracings going down instead of the much more common version of them going up.

We created these corner posts by extracting 10″by10″ posts out of the corners of 14″by14″ beams. Pretty slick huh? No waste at all, and we ended up with very strong, very stable, very attractive, historically accurate, corner posts.

With regard to the corner bracing going down instead of up… I have stood on both types of frames on multiple occasions and I can tell you that the Virginia method is more stable, with noticeably less movement.

Originally posted 2015-02-04 15:15:17.

This is the only newly built timber frame that I am aware of (other than museums) that is based upon historic Virginia timber-frame standards. Most of the timber frames that are manufactured today are overly engineered for stresses and loads and then aesthetics are added back in, sort of like how MSG goes into Chinese food. There are some folks up in New England that reproduce their style framing (it’s pretty nice)… but I’m not aware of anyone that produces our historic style. And yes we do have a style, and yes it is wonderful (better than those Yankees, thank you very much).

Notice the tree branch on top for luck… gotta have that. Look for other articles here that illustrate what makes a Virginia frame unique.

Originally posted 2015-02-04 14:27:16.

Here’s your humble host, standing out front of the timber frame that we put together for the front section of the Middle River house.  It’s all made from locally cut timber, purchased at a nearby sawmill for a bargain price. I realllly like this frame, it’s doable, it’s friendly, it’s not some elaborate showpiece of huge scale. It’s down to earth, something each of the men who played a part in building it could imagine one day doing for themselves.

Originally posted 2015-02-03 14:37:09.

It’s not very pretty… lots of dirty lumber and mud, but this is the reality of what a new/old structure looks like when you begin the process. Keep in mind that building a handmade house is sort of like having a newborn baby… you can’t let the poop scare you.

When building a home or a cabin the process often starts with the purchase of an antique structure. You want to buy the BEST there is out there on the market. You are going to spend a lot more money finishing the structure than this initial purchase, but this purchase is the core, is the heart, is the most visible piece. It’s what you are after most of all. DO NOT buy the cheapest, shop around, find someone with plenty of experience to help you determine if it’s the best, don’t rely on the guy selling it to you to tell you the truth. And with all that said, keep in mind that  the best antique structure out there is old, in need of repair, and it’s very dirty. Trust me, it can be scary when the material is delivered, but have faith, it’s going to be wonderful when finished.

I’d also like to point out in this picture my wonderful 1988 Ford truck. I bought her new for $9,000 and it took me a couple years to forgive myself for paying that much for a truck. Well, I still drive that same truck today, with 450,000 miles, and antique tags, on her. I no longer beat myself up about what I paid for it.

I saw a commercial during the 2015 Super Bowl that revealed that men look better standing next to a truck. It is so, so true. 😉

A man needs a truck. If you don’t have one, get one today.

Originally posted 2015-02-02 17:06:36.

One of the greatest tales I have to share is of the time we disassembled an eleven sided silo made entirely of chestnut lumber and reassembled it on top of a mountain in Madison County.
The first time I saw the structure I was stricken with its beauty and uniqueness. It was in weathered condition and I inquired with the owner about their plans for the building. They responded that they were going to burn it. The client I had at the time negotiated a contract for its acquisition and I began the process of designing and constructing a new foundation for this silo on his property.
The new foundation would be a full eight foot tall stone structure that one would enter into before ascending the remaining 34 feet of the wooden silo. We built the walls two feet thick out of sandstone salvaged from an old barn and we incorporated an arched doorway and two arched windows.
The greatest challenge was laying out the eleven sided floor system that would act as a guide for the masons in building the structure. I urge you to give a try… it makes laying out an octagon easy in comparison… my secret weapon at the time was that one of my sister-in-laws just happened to be a high school geometry teacher. It was from a close friend that I found out that an eleven sided object is known as an undecagon.
The question of why would someone build an eleven sided structure really puzzled me and everyone that would view the structure. The people that owned the silo had no idea; it was built before their time. I found other eleven sided silos in the area and talked with those farmers too. All were at a loss as to why they were built with eleven sides, and they also had pondered it over for many years. It appeared that the reason was lost and only the builders knew the secret and had carried it to their grave. Each silo was built a bit different from the other indicating that each was built by the individual farmers… which was only more maddening in that it was formerly common knowledge, and was now lost.
I spent a good bit of time searching for the answer, at the library, on line, and in speaking with many farmers and extension agents, none knew the answer, but from each I gained a clue. One by one the clues all came together and gave me the answer. In a nutshell it came down to human scale and proportion.
If you go to a sawmill you will find that most of the lumber that is produces is sixteen feet long. Of course the reason they cut it that length is because that is what is demanded. And the reason that length is demanded is because most walls are eight feet tall (half of sixteen), which gives us humans plenty of headspace in our homes so as not to bump our heads on the lighting fixtures and such.
Now if a man wants to build a round object like a silo by laying one course of lumber on top of another and nailing it down he is faced with the decision of how long of a piece of wood does he want to work with? The shorter the piece the smoother the exterior roundness of the structure, but that also means more more labor… more boards need be cut and nail down. So the farmer goes to the lumber yard and brings home sixteen foot pieces of lumber, which would be way too long to use, and he cuts them in two… still too long, so he cuts once more giving him four foot lengths, an easy length to work with. And that is exactly how long the individual pieces on this silo were.
But why use eleven of them per course… why not ten or twelve?
Well it turns out that the most efficient diameter of a silo on a small farm is ten feet. This allows for a man to get inside the silo when it is full of grain and allow him to stand in the middle and shovel all the grain out with the least amount of effort on his part. Ahhhh.
So the farmer begins building his silo by drawing on the ground a ten foot circle in order to build the ideal size silo. He goes to his stack of four foot pieces of lumber and one by one lays them around the perimeter of his circle and then finds out that it takes exactly eleven pieces to complete the circle!
Not ten pieces, not sixteen pieces… but eleven pieces. So there was no mysticism to the number eleven, no hidden secret. Just good old country boy practicality… “this is what I have and this is what I want, one step at a time and I’ll get what I need”… and… “this will confuse everyone in the future!”

Originally posted 2015-01-31 14:41:00.

It looks like it it’s going to be tomorrow before I can get to posting a photo of the finished project and writing out the story of why these silos were built with eleven sides. Thank you all so much for your support and kind words. It’s a real pleasure to share with you all the unique projects I’ve built over the years!

Originally posted 2015-01-30 17:00:29.

Not your typical office job. 🙂

Building something different than the standard norm is to be highly commended. I encourage everyone to apply as much artistic influence in their work as they can. And when they are not working, choose to support those do something out of the ordinary.

Originally posted 2015-01-30 16:35:18.

The stone “undecagon” served as a base that we would re-erect an eleven sided silo upon.

The silo was made out of 2by4 chestnut laid flat, one upon another, and then nailed down. Notice the ring of hundreds of pieces ringing around the site waiting to go up. This baby is going to be tall!

We anchored the first few courses down by bolting them to the stone base. Each course had five large nails driven into each board and before nailing we would apply a layer of construction adhesive and silicon caulk to strengthen and to stop water infiltration. Each board was a slightly different size in length, width, and thickness thus it required a great deal of sorting and measuring throughout the construction to keep things tight, plumb, and level.

So, we built an eleven sided stone base to accommodate an eleven sided silo… but, why did the silo have eleven sides?

Originally posted 2015-01-30 16:02:48.

A little cabin in the woods… and, I mean little… four feet by six feet… but, she is made out of 1700’s vintage timbers and has a copper roof… and, is located on a pretty sweet spot of land!

One of the benefits of working with antique wood, and there are so many, is that there is always left-over material.

An old house was in ruins and it was salvaged, the vintage material was used to build a new home, the left-over material was used to build this little cabin. Then the left-over material from that project was used to build a piece of furniture. And once again, the left over material from that was used to build a toolbox.

Originally posted 2015-01-25 15:56:05.