What is a Timber Frame House?

Essentially, timber framing is a method of post-and-beam construction in which the frame of the structure is made of large-dimension lumber and braces, usually with intricately interlocked joints and wood fasteners such as pegs. Timber frame homes are more costly to build than conventional homes, because of the labor intensive nature of frame joinery and the expense of the wood. A home can be completely built using timber framing, but "hybrid" building techniques are most commonly used in timber frame homes built today. These hybrids use conventional stick built methods for the portions of the house where the framing isn t visible. The hybrids can include homes that have single rooms with full timber framing or with rooms whose roof trusses are supported by conventional wooden stud walls. In all cases, frame components are custom-made by San Juan Timberwrights for each home. They are constructed at the workshop, then dismantled and transported to the building site, where they are ...

The timber frame style of building dates back hundreds of years. In timber frame construction, logs are hewn into square pieces which are then used to frame the house. The pieces are joined together with pegged joints rather than nails, screws or bracketing materials. In the early days of timber framing, the scribe framed method was used. In this method, each timber would fit in only one spot. When the craftsmen were making these logs, they numbered each one. Today the scribe rule method of timber framing has been replaced by the square rule. In the square rule method, all of the main joints are the same size. All of the pieces are interchangeable. As you can imagine, the square rule method, which was developed in the 18th century, made the process of building a timber frame home much quicker. The spaces between the timbers in one of these homes were filled with stones, brick or some other type of rubble. The craftsmen then applied plaster over the rubble on both the inside and ...  more