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Designing To Fit Your Land and Lifestyle

15 May 2012, 9:16 pm

When you make the decision to build a custom home, there is a lot that goes into creating the perfect design for your family. At Riverbend, we understand the importance of creating a home that is tailored to your personal style, reflects your lifestyle and fits into the composition of your land and our degreed architects are there to help when you begin your design process. Here are a few ideas of how you can reflect yourself and location in your home.

Reflecting your lifestyle Custom to fit climate

Building a timber frame house does not mean that your home is limited to the main structure’s foundation, think about the potential additions that would benefit your lifestyle. Perhaps you are building a summer lake house for the family, consider including a dock or a boat house to your design. If this project is meant to be a family farm, build a barn that matches your home design.

Perfect for your land

The tradition of timber framing utilizes timeless materials and building processes to connect you and your home to the nature surrounding it. Often times, particular sites or natural occurrences on the property are what initially sparked a family’s interest in building a wood home. Consider designing a court yard around that special tree on your property or including skylights and clerestory windows to appreciate the heights of the wooded area on site.

Adapting to your climate

Whether you are building in the northern chill of Canada or the warmth of the North Carolina coast, your timber home design should reflect the climate in which you live. For instance, including screened-in outdoor living spaces in a floor plan will help you to better appreciate a warmer climate. While storage for winter sports equipment or a space for a hot tub on the deck might be a better fit for your home in a colder region.

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Our Team Approach

8 May 2012, 10:13 pm

Deciding to build a custom timber frame home is an exciting endeavor that requires a dedicated and experienced team. When Riverbend developed our unique Total Home Solution® service, our goal was to create a seamless process for clients from the design phase of their home through completed construction. In order to deliver the level of service our clients deserve, we also had to implement an approach for managing each stage of your project.Floor Plan - Oak Grove

Your first point of contact is your Client Representative and he will become your project’s advocate until the day you turn the key in your new timber home. Alongside him, you are assigned one of our degreed architects who will be creating your floor plan and bringing your dreams to life. Your project manager is the final member of your team and the one making sure the construction runs smoothly and on time. These team members work to carry out our THS services in a seamless manner. Working together and staying in constant communication, your client rep, designer and project manager form a closely-knit understanding of the unique nature of your project.

With this level of interaction, each member also has a basic knowledge about the other teammate’s responsibilities. Instead of striving for separate goals within their fields, everyone fulfills their job with the complete picture in mind. For instance—when your designer is creating the conceptual drawings, they aren’t just thinking about designing an architecturally stunning home, they are also contemplating site location issues and timelines so that the project manager is aware upstream and can plan accordingly.

Overseeing our proven beginning-to-end Total Home Solution®, this seamless team approach has each member striving towards the same objective, and that is building you the custom, traditional timber frame home you’ve been waiting for. Working together, they can accomplish more, with fewer issues and tighter timelines.

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Riverbend’s Personal Touch

1 May 2012, 11:13 pm

We understand that when it comes to a project as personal and important as building your family’s legacy home, you will want to meet with your representative one-on-one.  At Riverbend we want that experience to be as personal and professional as possible.  We want each client, no matter where they live or choose to build, to have a representative that knows timber frame homes, understands the variations of your area, and most importantly, is dedicated to serving each of his clients with the time and energy they deserve.  With so many territories to cover, the chances of finding 100’s of independent representatives that fit this mold is impossible.  So how do we ensure a personal approach when your rep doesn’t live next door?

The direct connection made from in-person meetings are something that our representatives truly appreciate and value, and this is why they travel regularly to their territories. It doesn’t matter if your site is 2 hours away by car or 3 hours away by plane, your rep is ready and willing to meet with you.

When do client representatives travel? Many times they travel specifically to meet with a prospect who is ready to start the design process.  This often includes a site visit, where they walk your land and take photos for your designer back home. Another reason they would be in your area is to head a Home Planning Seminar.  HPS’s are held periodically and often include a design team member.  These seminars offer a more intimate method of interacting with interested prospects who are generally planning to build within 3 years. In addition, when reps already have travel scheduled, we will send out notifications letting everyone in the area know.

In between visits, technology gives us the ability to close distances in communication. Even when your rep is not available for a face-to-face visit, video conferences, Skype, phone and email are all instant ways to communicate easily and to send information and ideas back and forth.

 

To learn more about our building process and to see when your area representative is in your location, sign up to receive our newsletter.

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A Designer’s Perspective on Timber Home Designs

24 April 2012, 9:45 pm

Riverbend’s unique and seamless Total Home Solution® process begins with professional in-house architectural design. By assigning trained and degreed architects to work directly with our clients, we have created unique and well-built homes that match each individual’s style, location and budget. This week, we spoke with Celeste, one of our in-house designers about her experiences creating timber frame home concepts that brought people’s dreams to reality.

Celeste, Degreed Architect – In her words:

Designing a home for a client creates a very close and personal relationship between you both. You work with them from day one, creating a space that they will one day live in. Much like the range in their personalities and wants, the type of materials they choose also make each project a very unique adventure. In my experience, the traditional architectural style of Riverbend emphasizes the placement and design of the interior timbers, focusing on the essence of the timber frame with clean lines.

Along with working with the client to design a home that they have imagined and have been saving for, I truly enjoy the creative freedom. I am able to express creative ideas through the design of homes and interpret these customer’s dreams into a concept drawing. Seeing a home I designed go from preliminary sketches to actual reality is a very accomplished feeling.

Over the years, I have designed some pretty unique spaces in projects before. From religious spaces like a full church with an alter and pews to high-tech safe rooms, it is always exciting to bring each client’s personality into their home. Probably the most unique room I have ever designed for a client was a bird room. This room was intended to house a variety of birds and even had a drain in the floor to keep the area clean.

 

To learn more about Riverbend’s unique design process, visit the website’s design page: http://www.riverbendtf.com/ths/design-process.html

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What is a Custom Timber Home?

17 April 2012, 10:32 pm

Customization is a word used often here at Riverbend, but what exactly do we mean? When we speak of building to a budget, size and location of a project, those parameters are measured and altered in degrees of customization. Understanding that every homeowner’s vision is different, we work closely with clients to ensure that their home matches the image they see when they close their eyes. Whether that be altering the look of one of our existing floor plan concepts or creating an entirely new plan from scratch.

Home ExteriorMinor Customization

For some, after looking through countless company websites at a variety of timber frame homes, one design concept might stand out from all the rest. Perhaps there is a certain floor plan that has caught your eye for its overall appeal but there are a few things you would like to tweak. Having years of experience with this level of customization for clients, Riverbend designers can make those alterations, whether it be to bump out a wall for a larger living space or adding a basement to match a unique landscape.

Extensive Customization

This degree is the more common of the three at Riverbend. While minor customization relies on the overall structure of an existing plan for a new home’s construction, this degree is not so dependent on structural consistency. For some, their inspiration is found from more than one floor plan concept or there might even be certain pieces of different concepts that they would like to see come together in their home. With extensive customization, there is freedom to move around rooms and change an existing floor plan while still retaining the overall look of the design concept that was their inspiration.

Complete Customization

With complete customization, your designers work with you from the ground up to design a completely unique floor plan concept that is tailor-made to your wants. There is no limit to this level of design, you may find inspiration from pictures and plans, but the end result will be all your own. If you are a client with a particular design in mind to accommodate your unique lifestyle, total customization will allow for a completely one-of-a-kind timber home.

 

No matter what degree of customization you choose, you will work with architectural designers through the entire process to ensure that your timber home achieves your specific needs for your style, budget and location.

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