MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2020

35 OLD FASHIONED LOVE This lovingly built sustainable timber-frame home wastes nothing and means everything MOUNTAIN HOME Walking into this building, you can’t help but be mesmerized; the timber-framed house is a work of art. You can stare at the lines for hours. And once the owner starts talking about it, it’s obvious he’s enamoured with the place. As is the entire family. They put a ton of work into it. The house sits on 140 rolling acres near the Beaver Valley with fields, hardwood bush and a stream running through it. “Originally I wanted to build the house on the hill in the back 40,” says the owner, “but it’s a long way back and I was always under the opinion that you should take the ugliest part of your property and that’s where you should build. That way you get to look at the beauty of nature. So that’s what we did. This location was actually a gravel pit.” The foundation is concrete slab on grade on a cobble trench, then the owners relied on the expertise of Joshua Thornton from Natural Build in Durham, to begin the framing. “Joshua went with me to the back of the property and gave me an inventory of what he needed. So we cut down the required logs in the back, milled them all, then he took them over to his place in Durham to finish them up. He brought them all back here and assembled it with steel pegs. Then once it was up, he put the oak pegs in, and those expand holding it all together.” words and photos :: Colin Field