We did a barn frame for great repeat clients in Bethel. The 20×30 barn will be used as an antique shop, and we designed a large front porch on which to display antiques. The barn also has a walk-out basement for storage, and sheds along both eave walls under which to park equipment. The middle bent of the barn features a queen-post truss, allowing the full 20×30 footprint to be wide open without any interior posts. We had fun with the front porch frame, scribing in book-matched live-edge cherry timbers to create an arch-braced truss. We also designed and built a cupola for the barn.

We worked with the client, an architect, to adapt a timber frame to his design for a family lake-house retreat. We raised the main house frame, then went back after the house frame was sheathed to raise the porch frame. The frame is Eastern White Pine, except for the porch posts which are VT-grown European Larch (a rot-resistant species).

We were hired to design and craft a frame for a barn at the same property where we made the hand-hewn ell frame in Sudbury. The 30×42 barn is a combination of a Yankee-style barn (with gable-end center-aisle drive-through) and an English barn (with one eave-side drive-in entrance). In order to accommodate a hydraulic auto lift, the tie beam in one bent is interrupted and raised a few feet. There will be an Italianate cupola that we designed added to the barn during the finishing phase.

We were hired to recreate the hand-hewn timber frame from an historic farmhouse in Sudbury, VT that was lost to fire. Working with the client and architect, we designed a frame that very closely mimicked the original, incorporating a few features (like loft floor framing) to make the space fit the client’s needs. We recreated fir log-rafters and a pentagonal ridge beam to match the old frame, and we used broad-axes to hand-hew all visible surfaces of the timbers in the frame.

As part of our timber work for a library addition in Poultney VT, we designed and created an octagonal roof timber frame to cap an octagonal tower. The frame features eight hip rafters and eight curved braces that join into a ‘roof boss’ or ‘kingpin’, a large octagonal timber at the center of the roof that accepts the rafters and curved braces and is suspended by them. The frame is currently assembled on the ground and awaiting roofing and trim before being flown into place by a crane; we’ll update this post when we have photos of the frame in its final home.

We designed and fabricated the timber work for a large addition to a 19th century farmhouse in Poultney, VT. The interior structure of the building is rendered in timber, and the exterior high-performance envelope is built conventionally. The new space houses a large book collection and guest quarters, and also features an octagonal turret with an octagonal hipped timber roof (check that frame out on its own page, here). We also designed and built a timber-frame pergola for the patio. Goosewing worked closely with our friends at A. Ginsburg Architects to design the frame, and with Black Diamond Builders to detail the timber frame/stick frame interface. Photos of the finished interior by Caleb Kenna.

I designed and built a home for my wife and myself near my shop in Lincoln. It’s a hybrid design, featuring a double-stud exterior wall of local, rough-sawn pine with interior structure framed with timber. This hybrid style can make a lot of sense for new house construction, combining the beauty and strength of timber framing with the efficiency of a locally-sourced double-stud envelope.

Although I usually limit my scope of work to just the timber frame, in this case I did almost everything from concrete to slate roof to brick masonry and frame-to-finish carpentry. It’s been a rewarding process and I may consider some whole-house projects in the future.

The winter of 2018 found us fabricating and raising a large and complex frame for a house in lovely Little Compton, RI. The frame had over 20,000 board feet of timber (VT white pine, with braces sawn from black oak from the house site in RI), the largest we’ve done. The architect’s design called for an unusual arrangement with asymmetrical wall heights, enormous eave overhangs, and many competing rooflines. We worked to design a frame that could safely and efficiently realize the conceptual plan, utilizing a kind of modified liegender stuhl form borrowed from the Germanic timber framing tradition.

Unfortunately the frame proved devilishly difficult to photograph; it was raised in stages, with the site carpenters installing wall panels before the timber porch and overhangs were added. Hopefully these photos give a sense of the scale and complexity of the frame.