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Living Legacy
Timber Homes Illustrated, June 2002
Written by Colleen Morrissey | Photography by Roger Wade
A Michigan couple builds a timber-framed home that is destined to become a nature retreat
The home, which enjoys an isolated setting on a 120-acre wildlife preserve, rests snugly atop a small ridge. A hammerbeam truss holds up the roof above the home's wide stone porch, whose design is based on one that the homeowners saw on a home improvement television show.
The home's open floor plan allows the timber frame sections of the house to be seen from almost any vantage point. The plan also features the roof's exposed valley rafters, which are visible from the great room and kitchen.
When Tom O'Connell bought 120 acres of wooded farmland 25 years ago, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with it. Not in any rush to make a decision, he let the property lie dormant. Then, after many years, Tom and his wife, Pat, decided to turn their land into a sanctuary to benefit both the wildlife living there and children who need a place to learn about nature.
The couple decided that a timber-frame home would be perfect to blend into the surrounding countryside and serve as a lodge for visiting children.
Originally, the couple had considered a log home. "But," Pat says, "I really wanted a traditional home." When friends of theirs told them about a timber-frame home that they planned to build, noting that it included both rustic and traditional elements, the couple decided to make the 76-mile trip to the company that was producing their friend's home: Riverbend Timber Framing Inc. in Blissfield, Michigan.
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We're arranging to have the property remain undeveloped forever," Tom says. "we're going to pass the home on to an organization that will use it for nature education, hopefully for kids.
When they saw what timber framing was all about, both Tom and Pat were sold on the concept. "We absolutely fell in love with it," Tom says. Because each of them wanted to build a different type of home, Pat adds that the timber-frame home "was a great compromise."
The couple got to work right away on drawing up rough sketches for a ranch-style home, with the main living spaces on one level. "We didn't want to have to climb stairs," Pat explains. "We felt that if we were going to live here for the rest of our lives, we wanted it to be convenient for ourselves."
Besides being convenient, Tom and Pat wanted the exterior of the home to mimic many of the rustic-style homes they had seen while on trips out West. "They usually had a cedar-and-stone look on the outside," Pat says. "That was something we were really drawn to."
Riverbend's design staff turned the couple's sketches and floor plan ideas into formal plans. "We basically created a plan for the timber frame around their design," says Connie Seiser, the project coordinator for Riverbend who worked with the O'Connell's."I call their design a rambling ranch. The exterior has many roof line changes and dormers, which let light in and make the rooms seem so much bigger."
Tom and Pat also came up with the design of their home's wide stone deck. It's patterned on one they had seen on a home improvement television show, and they believe it will come in handy as an observation deck when they finally donate the home. "The deck overlooks a pond, and we have a lot of deer here," Pat says. "From the deck we can watch the deer down by the pond."
That's not all the kids will be able to see. For more than eight years, the O'Connell's have been providing more cover for the deer, turkeys and pheasants that they have been raising and releasing into the wild. They also have been building nature trails and stocked the property's three ponds with fish.
With four grown children and 14 grandchildren of their own, Tom and Pat note that the property and home are getting plenty of use already. "The children are out a lot -- they all live within an hour's drive," Pat says. "Since they are here quite often, we made sure we had room downstairs for them."
Two large bedrooms with private baths, a recreation room and a large storage area take up most of the living space in the walkout basement. A third guest bedroom on the main level serves as their parents' quarters.
Since many of their friends and family had construction experience, Tom and Pat enlisted their help to build the home. While Tom's good friend Freeman Hopkins acted as the general contractor, hiring subcontractors for the project, Pat's son Brian Budd surveyed the property and marked the footing. A neighbor dug the foundation.
With the help of Freeman and another friend, Tom installed the home's Reddi-Wall Styrofoam block basement, which he found out about at a local home show. In this type of do-it-yourself basement, Styrofoam blocks form the foundation walls. "The blocks snap together just like Legos," Tom explains. "Then steel rods are dropped into the empty spaces in the blocks, and concrete is poured in after that. What you basically have is a steel-reinforced structure that is encased in Styrofoam. Drywall is then glued onto it. It was so easy, and it has an R-value of 27, which makes the basement as comfortable as any other room in the house. I recommend them to anybody."
After the foundation was finished, the raising of the frame got off to somewhat of a slow start as a series of severe thunderstorms rolled through the region. While Riverbend's crew usually would have taken seven days to raise the frame and attach the company's insulated panels on the roof and walls, they ended up needing twice that time. "I don't think a day passed without a thunderstorm," Tom says. "Every day they'd have to get down from the frame and take a break until the storm passed."
After the frame was raised, the company's Insulspan panels were attached. Eight-inch-thick roof and 6-inch-thick wall panels were nailed to the perimeter of the frame. The couple opted for tongue-and-groove pine on the inside of the roof panels. "It was great," Tom says. "The ceiling was finished when the roof panels went on. The only thing we had to do was paint the drywall on the interior."
The star of the home is, of course, the timber-frame itself. Made from red and white oak found in southern Michigan and Ohio, it was left unstained. Instead, coating with Swedish oil brought out the wood's natural highlights.
The home's open floor plan allows the timber-frame sections of the house to be seen from almost any vantage point. "That's how we wanted it," Tom says. "We wanted the roof structure totally visible on the inside. And since we don't have any kids living with us, we didn't have to close off any areas. So we don't have any interior walls that go all the way up to the ceilings."
The home feels very spacious, even though the main floor only has 2,662 square feet of living space. Part of the reason is the four king-post trusses, which grace the great room, and the 25-foot-high ceiling. That is part of the joy of having a vaulted ceiling," Connie says. "Everything seems so much bigger than it actually is."
One feature that also makes the great room stand out are the roof's exposed valley rafters, which are visible from the great room and kitchen. (The valley rafters provide support where the main roof intersects the roofs of the left and right wings. In this case, valley rafters can be seen descending from the center of the great room to the posts in the corners.) "You don't always expose the roof transition, but all that is visible in this home," Connie says. "It's really beautiful to look at when you're standing underneath it."
Tom and Pat are very happy with their home, especially knowing the joy that it will bring to countless children in the future. "We built this house to give it away," Tom says. "We're just trying to provide the type of environment that we experienced when we were kids. You can stand on our porch and not see a rooftop -- we just want to leave it that way forever."
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