The owners of this stone home wanted to have an addition added that would serve as a large great room. They envisioned an antique barn frame, with massive timbers, and interior views clear to the peak of the roof.

Originally posted 2015-07-18 12:30:56.

Let me close out the tale of this project with six last construction photos.

So much of the wonder of having a home is in the building process itself. These moments in one’s life of building a home should be a treasured time. I encourage you to join in on the process of designing and building your own home as much as you can.

Maybe… build the home yourself… why give all the fun to someone else? 🙂

Originally posted 2015-07-16 14:15:19.

I thought perhaps this photo of the cabin’s fireplace was most appropriate to post… this was the fireplace as we, the builders of this cabin, saw the most (as you can see by our “decorations”).

We enjoyed this fireplace throughout the construction of the house often eating our lunches while gathered around it’s warming flames.

A career in construction has it’s downsides, it’s hard work, it’s dirty, and it is certainly not the path to wealth, but give me an open fire, some good conversation with dear friends, and the feeling that comes from accomplishing something with my own hands… any day.

Originally posted 2015-07-15 14:48:45.

There are a lot of details that make this cabin special… the logs, the copper roof, the stone chimney, the heart pine siding, and of course, the overall design… but for me, the one element that makes this cabin “snap” is the hip roof on the front porch.

I didn’t draw that hip feature in when I created the original plans… it was one of those “job site changes” that are so common on our projects. Something wasn’t right with a simple shed roof on this cabin as I had drawn it to be… it was just too… plain.

We had to fuss for a while in creating the right angle on this hip roof, moving boards around and then standing back and taking a look at it, but eventually we reached this look… and we liked what we saw.

I hope you do to.

Originally posted 2015-07-13 20:05:33.

The house then reached it’s “ugly period”… you know, that time of a home’s construction when all the exterior wrap has torn loose a few times, when the yard is scattered with debris, when someone had tacked up a sheet of plywood over a window opening to keep the rain out.

But then, the roofers showed up with their shiny copper and all those ladders.

Originally posted 2015-07-12 12:28:31.

I really like this photo.

I know, a lot of people just see a construction shot of a house being built… “seen it before”… “what’s the big deal?”

But for me, this house, this perspective of this house, is a symphony of roof lines.

Originally posted 2015-07-11 12:41:57.

I really love the point where the old timber frame and the log cabin came together.

There was a sense of tremendous strength in those corners.

The owner of this home will never fear the wind.

Originally posted 2015-07-09 14:56:43.

The timber frame additions each had antique hewn rafters that we would expose on the interior.

The log cabin though would have an attic space which would be used for personal storage and air handler equipment, so we would build a roof here using new lumber.

I’ve never assembled a roof using “engineered roof trusses”. I know, all the paperwork says that they are just as strong, or even stronger, than properly sized rafters, but they look wrong, they eat up the attic space, and well, I simple don’t trust them to hold up for centuries.

Originally posted 2015-07-09 14:40:16.

An unbeatable combination…

Log.
Stone.
Timber Frame.
And, a big beautiful sky.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Here we see the front of the home.

The log cabin is now ready for the first floor ceiling joists to be installed and then we can continue with the next floor of log walls which will create a bedroom above the family room.

The stone foundation work is completed just enough for us to erect the cabin and will be filled in at a later time.

The timber framing is slowly going up on this side which will create two future bedrooms, one above the other.

Originally posted 2015-07-06 18:30:55.

It’s a wondrous world out there in the mountains, building a home.

Originally posted 2015-07-06 16:10:42.