This house was unique with it’s combination of good and bad materials… located just feet from a railroad track and decaying rapidly… the railroad company and the land owner decided the house had to go.

What made the house unique was that the house was framed as poorly as it could have been with minimally sized lumber that was spaced as far apart as what would hold the house up, and no more… you know… like most homes built today.

But, the house was filled with elaborate trim that I was allowed to extract before the house came down.

I wondered if it might not have been one of those “mail order homes” of the past, where the future homeowner would buy the plans and woodwork of the home from a catalog and then the homeowner would by the framing lumber from a local sawmill… there was that much of a contrast between the quality of the framing and finish materials.

Originally posted 2015-02-12 13:13:31.

A chimney coming down!

This photo series was taken with my old Canon camera with a manual advice.

A chimney comes down no faster than a tree… but it’s a lot scarier… a tree doesn’t throw rocks (or bricks in this case) every where when it hits the ground. 🙂

It is always a sad, yet fascinating thing, to watch a chimney come down. Some chimneys can stand like monuments for centuries to come, but old brick chimneys are often a danger to leave standing… the inner bricks and those facing the house are often not cured, and thus are soft and will decompose quickly when exposed to the rain.

Originally posted 2015-02-12 12:47:02.

Here’s a photo of the completed heart pine barn/home frame. It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to design and build this beauty. In a fiction world where money doesn’t exist I would gladly keep on building homes like this one.

Notice the back addition. On most of the homes I build I incorporate a standard stick built addition, whether it’s a log or a timber frame home. It’s a money saving feature… the fact is that there are rooms in a house that don’t need the pizazz of glorious wood exposure…. such as the laundry room, a bathroom, the utility room, closets, etc.

And, another bonus is that we like to put these modern additions up first, they give us, and our tools, and our materials protection from the weather. When a quick shower shows up we just quickly retreat and wait it out.

Originally posted 2015-02-11 16:20:57.

Here’s a photo taken inside the barn-home just prior to closing up the roof. The final stress skin panels are being set. We are only hours from having the house in the dry, and never again will we be worried about this frame getting wet!

Originally posted 2015-02-10 23:29:10.

Men are invincible.

Or at least we think we are.
We can stand on the “do not step here” top rung of a ladder, while wearing no safety helmet, while operating a saw… yes, even a very large saw.

I still remember this moment years later, when I showed up on the jobsite to witness this feat. The young man was given a talk on safety and an inquiry into his desire to live a long life, free of injuries. My company has had an amazing record of job site safety, no major injuries at all, the insurance companies have made out like bandits from us… thank God. Our success has not come from following the government rule books, but from practicing caution and common sense, from looking out for each other, and from listening to that quiet voice saying “is this a smart thing to do?”

Originally posted 2015-02-10 13:04:26.

Real men wear hats… no further comment needed.

Originally posted 2015-02-10 12:12:17.

Here we are assembling a barn home that we made from antique heart pine timbers. The wood was a joy to work with and created a beautiful frame.

Originally posted 2015-02-10 11:33:41.

I believe most people would view this house as an eyesore.

It’s one of the hundreds that I’ve been called on to come take a look at over the years, to see whether it could be restored. or if not, to see if there was any salvage value to it. This house was clearly beyond “practical restoration” (although I have taken on more extreme challenges than this one, but the pocket book has to be deep and the determination strong).

I passed on the salvaging option also, I don’t know why, but this old house just spoke to me, and I didn’t have the heart to be the one take her down, so I just snapped this photo and thanked the owners for letting me look her over.

Originally posted 2015-02-05 19:10:41.

If you are going to build a timber frame home from scratch, or if you choose to use timbered roof framing for your cabin or home, make sure and dovetail the collar ties into the rafters… not only is the result aesthetically pleasing, but the strength of roof is well beyond anything that could ever come against it.

Originally posted 2015-02-05 14:57:05.

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.