Reflecting your lifestyle 

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.

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.

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.

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

Minor 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.

By frequently recording and posting videos regarding various aspects of the timber framing industry, we are able to not only paint a visual picture for our clients but reach out to them on a more personal level. Ranging from stacking videos to customer testimonials, we aim to achieve clarity in the building process while keeping customers up-to-date on our current projects.

Visit the Riverbend website to see some of the most recent videos posted. Watch with us as we take a tour of our plant and experience the precision put into cutting every timber. From there you can view a demonstration of a timber frame bent being assembled or hear an interview with a client on his experience building a timber frame home.  Our most recent video features a gallery of custom timber frame barns.

Visit our video gallery to view all of our informational videos and submit your request for the next subjects we cover.  Tell us what you want to see next.

The Space Above

The focus of many when designing a kitchen is placed on the cabinets, countertops and other fixtures. Don’t forget to look above when going through this process.  Design options for your space might include a high vaulted ceiling and dormer windows to allow for more natural light or more custom accents such as bents and truss work. If you desire a less complex design, a flat ceiling with minimal accents throughout the space will achieve this. Working with your Riverbend designer can help you to find the perfect ceiling that blends well with the kitchen area.

The Use of Timbers

With the unique structural and decorative appeal of timber framing, how do you envision it within your kitchen space? Do you want more or less timber in the space? Would you like to include complex truss work or more simple designs? Do you want the timber in this room to be the focal point, to simply accent or do you not want it visible at all? Having your timber framing visible within your kitchen can create a more vivid look, while something as simple as incorporating your framing into your cabinets can give off a distinct, yet subtle appeal.

What Style is Your Kitchen?

While timber framing can have a powerful appearance, this material choice does not have to seal the style of your kitchen.  If you are aiming to build a rustic timber home with that theme seen throughout each living space, consider highlighting the craftsmanship of your timbers in your kitchen space. Or consider fewer timbers in the room for a different look and feel. Whether you want a country, modern or European style kitchen, Riverbend has the tools and experience to design the layout and style of any look you are hoping to achieve.

Designing and using your kitchen is always a fun thing to experience. There are a lot of factors to think about when planning, even in the beginning stages. By having a goal in mind for your ideal kitchen, you can work with your Riverbend designer to achieve your unique look and feel.

1. Building costs are beginning to rise
2. Mortgage interest rates are still low
3. Quality builders are looking for projects
4. Design today to build tomorrow

Building Costs

With the downturn of the economy over the last 5 years, Americans saw opportunity in cheaper real estate and lower building costs; even 2 years ago this was still seen to be true. The reality now is that the costs of materials and labor are starting to go up. With an average life span of a building project being 3-5 years, this could mean inflated prices and limited services in the future. By being on the bottom of this upward curve to a better economy, you can still reap the best economic benefits for your project. If you can afford it now, now is the time to start!

Low Interest Rates

At some point, we are going to have to pay for the stimulus spending of the last couple years. We cannot continue spending without creating inflation in the future. However, for the time being, interest rates are still low. Although changes in mortgage rules require a larger down payment right now, once you qualify, you will be getting the best interest rate which makes for an overall greater long term investment. Once the recovery starts, inflation is bound to start influencing the homebuilding market. Whatever you are feeling about real estate— and many people are not feeling very good, real estate is still the best protection against inflation.

Quality Builders are Available

With new home construction still at some of its lowest recorded levels, there are fewer builders and subcontractors whose businesses survived the lows of the economic downturn.  However, these tend to be some of the most talented builders in the industry. Right now the lack of projects available means you don’t have to wait as long to begin building your project and you are more likely to attract quality contractors.  In the near future, these builders will become booked up and you will either need to wait even longer or use a less qualified general contractor.

Be Prepared, When the Time Comes

For Riverbend, the more business begins to pick up the busier our design department will get. It can take from 6 months to 3 years from the initial start of your design process until you move into your timber frame home. Just because you finish your design this summer doesn’t mean you have to build this fall.  Take your time working with our architectural department, and then be ready to start building as soon as you see the opportunity.

So if you want to build your timber frame home in the next couple of years, it is a far smarter bet to start your timber home design now when the interest rates are low, building costs are less affected by inflation and the skilled labor force is available. This is a historic time with historic opportunity.

Barn-style Floor Plan Concept: The Lancaster

For those living on working land, traditional timber frame barns are natural parts of their everyday life. Built as a simple storage area or housing for horses and livestock, these structures retain a genuine integrity and functional layout that keeps them important no matter what their purpose may be.

Today there are many of us who are attracted to the open layout and preponderance of wood flowing through a traditional barn’s interior.  Even if we don’t have the need or desire to build a barn that doesn’t mean we can’t incorporate this feeling into our homes.

The building of  barn-style timber homes has become popular and many such homes can be found as you drive through the country. Building a timber home with a barn-like architectural flavor allows for a unique aesthetic appeal for the exterior as well as the open and accommodating floor plan.

The Lancaster is one such floor plan concept.  Recently introduced to the Riverbend portfolio, the Lancaster demonstrates the key components of a barn-style home. With 4,248 sq. ft. of livable space, clerestory windows above and square angles indicative of the style, the Lancaster concept is a testament to traditional timber framing.

To view more photos of Riverbend projects in this style, visit the barns photo gallery. There you can see the classic appeal that has inspired clients to build homes, barns and additional living spaces with this time-honored look.

Riverbend Timber Home in the Mountains

Considering the movement in the market the last couple of years, lenders have developed greater cautionary, conservative steps in the lending process. Where credit applications and documentation were more relaxed in the past, lenders now require all documentation and applications to be thorough and verified. Along with these, knowing the comps of your projected build site will help determine your property’s value.

Assessing the property value of a home is one of the bigger challengers lenders must face in approving loan applications. With all of the foreclosures and short sales popping up throughout the country, determining whether your timber home’s property is marketable in the event of a foreclosure as well as if it fits the market in its neighboring areas are indicators of how much your home and land will be worth.

When you are ready and before speaking with a lender, you should know about your property and project designs as well as the answers to the following questions:

1. If applicable, how much acreage do you have and is it typical of the surrounding area?
2. Are there other timber frame homes in the vicinity, or will yours be the first of its kind?
3. Will your home have alternative energy sources?
4. Is the cost and size of the timber home in line with other timber homes in the area?

By preparing your property specifics and documentation before speaking with a lender, your financing application will go more smoothly and will ultimately save you time in your project process.

All information for this article was provided by Paula Murtha, a Mortgage Consultant at US Bank with years of specialized experience in log and timber home framing.

For more information, contact her directly at 303-984-5844.