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“Seven years ago, the place we’d eventually ended up buying was for sale—though we were not in the market at the time. It is two pieces of property and there was a house in the location where we would rebuild and also a little cabin and they were both available, says homeowner Barb Loughran. “I’ve been going up to the Adirondacks for 50 years now. My parents have a summer home nearby, that we now call ‘two docks down,’ so for a number of years we’ve been going up there and opening up their cottage.”

Located just outside of Indian Lake, NY, the Loughran’s home, lovingly referred to as Sunset Lodge, is nestled on the shoreline of one the Adirondack’s thousands of pristine jewels of water. 

The Loughran's weren't in the market for a second home at the time. But once another buyer showed an interest in the cabin portion of the property, the Loughran’s had to make their move as both the house and cabin shared a driveway. So, the decision was made to buy both pieces of land and to build a brand-new structure in the place of the older house while using the “guest” cabin as a basecamp.

“Once we started, we got this fantastic architect out of Saratoga Springs, Brett Balzer. It was during Covid, and we worked with him over a year because everything was so delayed, says Barb. “Once we do something we’re the type to do it at highest quality. I love curves and that’s how we connected with New Energy Works. Brett knew that was their specialty, so we started to bring them into the whole design. It was an iterative process we enjoyed.”

“This was going to be an agricultural utility building. It was not going to be a venue, it was not going to a classroom—the outdoors is our classroom,” says Mary Mannix, Vice President Board of Directors Natick Community Organic Farm. “Whatever the farm teaches, its mission is education.”

Established in 1974, the Natick Community Organic Farm is a non-profit certified organic farm. It serves 26 communities and features 30 acres of open space while providing farm products and education to patrons of all ages, year-round. Often referred to as just The Farm, it has become THE place for the Natick community to learn. Whether about the food chain, land management, ecosystems, or natural farming skills, the farm has provided Massachusetts youth the life skills to last them into adulthood.

“Having your child go to a place like The Farm where they’re going to explore and do things like look at bugs,” says Mannix. “That’s what makes it such a beloved place. No screens, no cell phones, and the pace is agreeable.”

The centerpiece of The Farm was its functional 200-year-old timber frame cattle barn that dated from 1815. On March 17, 2021, in the early hours of St. Patrick’s Day, the barn was destroyed in a three-alarm fire. The destructive blaze was a devastating blow to the community who didn’t know how The Farm would ever recover. 

Whereas the tragic blaze could have torn the community apart, what it did was inspire a coming together through a grassroots fundraising campaign. The support was immediate and massive. Donations poured in locally as well as from surrounding areas. The community responded quickly because the farm had resonated and affected everyone in a positive way. 

“Accessibility is often mandated, but inclusion is a choice.” – Mike Bentley

On a donated field not far from the shores of Canandaigua Lake in New York, a brand new and overdue community space just opened. Motion Junction is located on Outhouse Road in the Richard P Outhouse Memorial Park, so named for the family that donated the land on which the park and new playground now stand. Motion Junction has the distinction of being the first Universal Design (UD) certified and fully inclusive playground in the United States. Universal Design is defined as ‘a concept in which products and environments are designed to be usable by all people, to the greatest extend possible, without the need for adaption or specialized design’. Motion Junction is an entire complex focused on improving health, wellness, performance, and social participation for a diverse population of people.

Architects, builders, families, and volunteers united for Motion Junction’s common goal of creating a space where people of all abilities can be engaged in a sensory rich environment that provides a safe harbor from the storms of their struggles. While the facility is labeled as a playground, it is much more than that, it’s a truly a diverse community space for everyone.

The mission of any fully inclusive playground is to encourage and increase interactions between a variety of people and institute parallel play. Parallel play is when children regardless of ability interact and engage with each other in a safe and inclusive space. The hope is that the socialization facilitated by parallel play will take root and expand into later life — informing the entire community.

In this episode of The Construction Leading Edge Podcast, host Todd Davalt interviews our founder and CEO Jonathan Orpin and talks about his passion for energy conservation and sustainable building, and hot it led him to establish multiple interconnected and profitable businesses.

How to FUTURE-PROOF Your Business w/ Succession Planning, an ESOP, & the Triple Bottom Line Concept - YouTube

See and hear more:

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast: Succession Planning, The Triple Bottom Line, and Setting Up an ESOP with Jonathan Orpin | E323 on Apple Podcasts

The Construction Leading Edge Podcast : Succession Planning, The Triple Bottom Line, and Setting Up an ESOP with Jonathan Orpin | E323 (libsyn.com)

https://link.chtbl.com/construction-leading-edge

New Energy Works in collaboration with the McMinnville Economic Development Partnership, Representative Lucetta Elmer, and Mayor Remy Drabkin hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for our new 20,000 square foot production facility in McMinnville Oregon on Thursday, December 21st.

With this new facility, employee-owned New Energy Works will be expanding our McMinnville operations adding new cutting edge CNC equipment, offices, and production space to our existing campus, which will increase our capabilities and service offerings, resulting in regional growth and expanded employment opportunities in the McMinnville community.

Recently our west coast team participated in a community project for Miller Woods, a public woodland park located near our McMinnville, Oregon shop.

For the project New Energy Works in partnership with Solid Carbon and Elk Creek Forest Products provided a new timber frame pavilion for Miller Woods, which was raised by hand on a sunny Saturday by a group of community volunteers, partners, and many of our New Energy Works co-workers.

“We are always on the lookout for small community projects like this, so that we can help folks out and be good citizens in our local community,” explained New Energy Works Founder & CEO Jonathan Orpin. “John Mead, our friend from Solid Carbon, called us up and said: ‘I know New Energy Works is always looking for interesting projects, and we are pouring a carbon sequestering concrete slab for this great woodland park near your shop in McMinnville called Miller Woods, would you like to be part of it and put up a timber frame pavilion?’ and I told him you bet!”  

On a recent episode of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, host Tom Raftery sat down with our founder & CEO Jonathan Orpin to discuss his journey helping to revolutionize the timber and construction industry with a staunch commitment to sustainability.

The episode dives deep into how New Energy Works incorporates an eco-friendly approach to our projects, often focusing on the use of reclaimed and sustainably harvested wood in partnership with our sister company Pioneer Millworks.

See the interview on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/kNPvRjzPLx8
 

See more from Digital Supply Chain:  The Future of Building: Sustainability and Innovation with Jonathan Orpin (digitalsupplychainpodcast.com)

For homeowners Mary & Eric, building a responsibly sized and environmentally sound retirement home was a priority for them as they looked toward their own future, and the planets. Utilizing as many environmentally friendly building materials as possible, the couple were equally concerned about the homes short term impact on the environment, as well as its long-term energy use and performance.

“Eric is a scientist-type personality and Mary is a cool artist-type personality, and juxtaposing those two points of view together into a finished home was the challenge here. We worked with them and added more timber into the building, opened some windows, and worked with the couple to minimize the square footage of the space down to what was essential to their lifestyle. It was quite the task to meet the needs of both clients, with Mary being focused on the craft and beauty of the home, and Eric being very concerned with material selections, sourcing, imbedded carbon, and performance. It was a winning combination though, and both were willing to compromise when needed to make things work and stuck by their guns when necessary to get what they wanted. In the end we came up with a very nice design that was a beautiful compromise to what they each wanted out of this home.” - Architect David Shirley AIA, NCARB

“When we looked at the New Energy Works website and read about how the company crafts high-performance enclosures that pay very close attention to a home’s thermal envelope as part of their Design + Build process, we were very impressed that the team makes sustainability a normal part of how they do business,” Eric shared. “To our mind that is the kind of company we want to support.”

Ep. 178 - Triple Bottom Line with Jonathan Orpin

In this episode of Contractor Radio host Jim talks with our CEO and Founder Jonathan Orpin about operating a business sustainably on multiple fronts by implementing the Triple Bottom Line Company model.

Jim and Jonathan discuss why the triple bottom line emphasizes people AND profits. They turn their discussion toward aging out of your business sustainably by creating an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that rewards your workers with ownership and leaves the former owner/founder with a sense that their company is in good hands.

In the second part of the episode Jim and Jonathan dig into the flexible definition of sustainability. They have a great talk on what it means to focus as much energy and resources into stewarding the planet as generating profit.

See more:

Our friends at Rochester Home Magazine honored us with a detailed cover editorial featuring our east coast design team.

Written by Helana Shumway

Project photos by Tim Wilkes

Read the whole issue online: September//October 2023 Rochester HOME Magazine by Featured Media - Issuu

The West Coast team was on site this spring raising what can only be described as a cathedral-like horse barn. One of the most intense barns New Energy Works has designed & raised, this one with the added challenge of being in the Alvord Desert in southwest Oregon.

The Alvord is actually a (mostly) dry lakebed that stretches for miles: flat and lifeless with a chapped sandy surface.  It’s worth the visit, but be prepared, there's only one gas station and no grocery stores for 100 miles.

The team spent two weeks on site raising the frame in 40 mile an hour winds, blazing hot sun some days, and snowstorms on others. Still, when picking giant bents, you can’t bring a timber framer down when their passion and spirits are high.

“I had a lot of fun doing it. And I mean that. We got to play with some interesting crane rigging,” Darren Watson our west coast Timber Frame Lead shared, getting rather building geeky with glee. “Skookum with pulleys…two different points…spreader bar…and keeping it balanced. It was pretty neat.”

Recently New Energy Works raised a modern Douglas fir timber frame pavilion designed by our friends at Eco-Logic Studio for the Motion Junction Playground, a first of its kind inclusive playground that provides an accessible play experience to children and adults of all physical and mental abilities located near our east coast shop in Canandaigua New York.

The large pavilion project is 120 feet by 35 feet and includes 270+ timbers, the largest of which are over 35-feet long. Even the local media stopped by to check out the raising and our own Nick Foley made it on the evening news!

When homeowners Mike & Carrie bought their farmhouse in the Finger Lakes region of New York 23+ years ago, there were foundational remnants of the original turn of the century barn on the property, which they always dreamed of one day rebuilding. More recently the couple, who now have four adult children, realized they might actually need a barn for additional storage and a place to socialize near their backyard pool area. But it took a family wedding to really push the project from dream to reality.

While plans for the barn meets pool house were already underway before their daughter got engaged, it was her request to get married at home that sped the project to completion just in time to serve as a family wedding venue.

The construction of their new traditional bank style barn was a collaborative effort with the barns classically styled timber frame provided by New Energy Works combined with the talents of partners Hanlon Architects and Russell Builders, with Farmed Board cladding and Hickory flooring from our sister company Pioneer Millworks.

What do pizza boxes, a canceled wedding, and a community hand raising have in common? This backyard pavilion in Oregon.

For homeowners Matt & Laura, 2020 was rough. Both work in the front-line medical industry and their dream wedding was looking less and less likely to ever happen. The couple decided that they would turn tradition around, forgoing a traditional one-time wedding ceremony and instead spending what would have been their wedding fund on an outdoor timber frame pavilion they could enjoy with their friends and family for many years to come.

At first, they used empty pizza boxes laid out on the ground to envision their ideas for the space, eventually deciding on a layout for their timber pavilion that included an outdoor pizza oven and Argentine grill, among other amenities.

Recently our fine woodworking division NEWwoodworks was involved in the renovation of a timber frame home that New Energy Works raised 20+ years ago in New York State. The project reunited our team with Brad Hall of Element Design Build, our former long-time construction manager, whose team was heading up the homes redesign and renovation.

We caught up with Rob D’Alessandro who manages our woodworking division to talk about the unique modern look the woodworking took on during the remodel of the home.

Q: How was this renovation project unique for the NEWwoodworks team?

A: This is a fairly unique project in terms of the way the design team on the renovation included some very specific elements that the homeowner had used in the past on other properties they own, incorporating that style into home. The result is a very modern look that our NEWwoodworks team had a lot of fun with.

When Julie built her ranch style home in Oregon back in 1989, she wanted a classic timber frame, but was unable to find anyone in the area building timber homes at the time. With a background in the construction industry and woodworking, she was her own general contractor on the home and got as close as she could to the timber frame aesthetic by including exposed beams and wood pillars.

“We are retired now, but what we did for a profession was excavation and heavy equipment rental, site work, a lot of high-end homes, municipality, public excavation work, like high schools, streets,” Julie told us. “Funny enough, we helped develop the neighborhood we live in about 35 years ago. We built our family home here, and at that time I wanted to do a timber frame structure, but no one in the area was doing them. What we have in the main house is open beam and wood pillars, which is as close as I could get to timber framing in 1989.”

More recently when Julie began considering retirement, she reached out to New Energy Works to design and build a timber frame addition to her much-loved family home. The reverent timber space that now houses her at home woodshop is designed to be a flexible space that can adapt to her fine woodworking needs today but could also be converted to functional living space in the decades to come.

(585) Magazine recently covered one of our favorite recent Design + Build projects in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. This project combined all our related services, Timber Frame, Design + Build, HPEz, fine woodworking from NEWwoodworks, and our sister company Pioneer Millworks.

More from (585): (585) magazine - Rochester, NY (585mag.com)

Related Content:

Long-Term Lake Front | New Energy Works

Natural materials for a custom home: Design Q&A | Pioneermillworks

Project Credits:

Architect: New Energy Works

Builder: New Energy Works, High-Performance Enclosure: New Energy Works

Engineer: Fire Tower Engineered Timber 

Reclaimed Wood: Pioneer Millworks 

I’ve been timber framing for more than 30 years. Very often over this time we’ve worked with owner builders. These folks span the same wide range as any other custom builder, from hands off the tools and just managing everyone, to placing every form, nailing every connector, and setting the last piece of bathroom tile.

Mostly though, it’s somewhere in between, smack in the middle. Scott & Jill are that way, and on a recent stop in after we’d been done with our part for a couple months, I was once again reminded of my oft-stated, “Human potential is an amazing thing”.

When I first visited their site in Sisters, Oregon, the two were busy clearing brush and building a pump house. They could see where they were going, had the views of The Three Sisters Mountain Range captured just right, and knew how the driveway and entry porch would eventually welcome guests. My coworker David had finished their plans but truthfully, Scott had sent us about the most detailed set of preliminaries we have ever received. They knew what they wanted.

And they knew how to work for it. You might remember the post from August when we raised their timber frame in 100+ °F and bright sun. We then went back and installed tongue and groove and structural insulated panels (SIPs). But everything else was Scott & Jill and their own set of subs and coworkers…and a lot more hard work of their own. Here are some shots on a recent snowy afternoon by our coworker Kelsey Boyer.

These are images of a well organized, quality job site. And of so much of a dream unfolding. I once asked those two how they are still so much in love (as was evident, if you get my drift).  “Shared dreams and the perfect partner,” was about the response. Stay with us over the next months. We’ll visit again and share the progress.

The unique timber frame building surrounding the Buffalo Heritage Carrousel in Buffalo, New York is part of the sweeping Canalside revitalization project at the terminus of the historic Erie Canal. The structure houses the extremely rare De Angelis Carousel, a hand carved menagerie carrousel that is nearly one hundred years old and is believed to be one of only ten carrousels of its kind produced by Spillman Engineering Corporation of nearby North Tonawanda New York.

Designed to be reminiscent of an eight-sided circus tent, the timber frame building surrounding the historic carousel is a merging of old and new technology. Featuring a cutting-edge solar array roof donated by Tesla that powers the antique carousel, that was also manufactured in Buffalo.

“We had targeted early on for the carrousel to be solar powered. We approached Tesla and asked if they would like to be involved and they said absolutely. So, they donated the roof,” says Carima El-Behairy, Director Operations & Development for Buffalo Heritage Carrousel inc. “The local Tesla Plant is only two miles up the road from us and our solar array roof came out of there, and I believe it is the first solar array roof in Buffalo.”

This Adirondack lakefront lodge with wrap around porches and stunning lake views was lovingly designed to seamlessly merge rugged Adirondack exterior aesthetics with turn of the century Craftsman interior style. Consisting of a main home and an adjacent guest & care takers quarters connected by large, elevated porches with timber covered walkways, this family home harkens to the lodge homes of the Adirondack region of New York in the early 1900’s.

“This building I would term a Craftsman - Adirondack fusion. The main house and the guest house are interconnected by covered walkways much in the fashion of the great Adirondack camps of the days of yore, where you could go from building to building under cover,” says Carlton Homes of Holmes, King & Kallquist Architects, the architecture firm behind the project. “The interior is a throwback to the Craftsman era of design, probably 1910 to 1920 era, with quarter sawn White Oak and other past era detailing, while the exterior is classic Adirondack post & beam with cove siding.”

With a desire to be closer to friends and family the homeowners bought the modestly sized one-hundred-foot-wide lakefront property in the Adirondack region of central New York with the intention to build a functional home that would allow them to gracefully age in place in the decades to come.

Renowned folk musician and guitarist Happy Traum, along with his wife Jane, and architect son-in-law Barry Price, teamed up with New Energy Works recently to create a Japanese inspired car port for their property near the legendary town of Woodstock in Ulster County New York.

Happy began his music career in the 1950s as part of the emerging acoustic and folk scene in Greenwich Village - New York City alongside contemporaries like Bob Dylan. Having longstanding ties with the local community, Happy and his wife Jane first moved to the Woodstock area in the 1960’s from NYC, riding the success of one of Happy’s early record deals to purchase the property.

“We have lived in the Woodstock area since 1967. We moved up here from New York and bought a piece of property and started to build,” Happy’s wife Jane told us. “Our world is the world of music, and we were drawn to Woodstock because it was an artist colony and a music center, even before the famous music festival, so we put down roots here.”

Marc and I were 20-some-feet in the air sitting on the principle rafters of two adjacent bents, setting a ridge beam as it was gently lowered into our hands from the nearby crane. “Well,” Marc said with a sly smile, “here we are again.” Marc and I have been setting ridge beams for 30 years together. This one was in Sisters, Oregon just a couple of weeks back. The sun that day was a merciful 96ºF (given that the day before had beat the 100ºF mark) and we were heading towards the end of a reasonable long crane day. 

I still do raisings. But I’ll also admit that at 66 I find myself a bit more tired at the end than perhaps I used to be. Why is it that I’m still “riding the ridge” so many years later? Why is it that Marc, still more fit than 80% of Americans half his age (I kid you not), is willing to fly out from his home in North Carolina to help us out?  The answers aren’t all too tough a riddle: we love raisings. As Marc said at the end of that particular day, “I feel such a sense of accomplishment.” It’s mostly that simple. It’s also the reason why our raising team is made up primarily of the same folks who cut and finished the frame in the shop. That sense of accomplishment, of bringing one’s work to completion, with a bonus scoop of circular learning.

I’ve seen my fair share of idyllic & passionate raisings. It comes with the job, and similar to the oiled Doug fir smell that hits you when you enter our New York office, its wonderment fades over time. Still delightful and one of the reasons I love working here, but less obvious in the day-to-day.

“The timbers were significantly more beautiful that I thought they would be once they were being raised. I had the opportunity to come to the New Energy Works Timber frame shop, and I would say that seeing parts of our house being milled was one of my favorite aspects of the project along with meeting the people behind the scenes, it was a very special experience for me personally, I loved it.” —Gwynne

 

And I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I’ve put my boots on, left my screen, and headed to site. A white-out drive and -20 degrees on a January morning weren’t exactly what I had in mind, but I had a favorite coworker/copilot (Meg) and a destination of Ithaca—my hands-down #1 Finger Lakes town.

“I think the raising happened on the coldest day of the year; it was a major feat. I cannot believe the crew withstood that cold. I think I had adrenalin pumping because I was so excited, literally running in circles with giddiness, it was a spectacular experience. I almost wish the raising could have been in snow motion, it was sort of like Christmas, you wait, and you wait, and you are so excited, I really just wanted to slow it down once it started to make it last longer.

Guest Blog & Photos by Kelsey Boyer (Timber Frame Project Engineer on our West Coast Team)

As the weekend grew closer and closer, the forecast looked more and more ominous. Despite the onslaught of snow that had arrived the previous weekend shutting down roads and stranding drivers, warm weather threatened the glorious conditions for backcountry skiing in the Oregon Cascades.

Anxiously awaiting the reports of conditions, my co-worker David and I decided that the rain was brief enough, the weather just cold enough, and the overnight snow that had fallen would be enough. Out into the wilderness we would go seeking adventure.

As we put on our boots, strapped ourselves into our skis, equipped with avalanche beacons and rescue equipment, we started our trek. An hour and a half of skinning (a ski term that refers to walking with skis that have strips of material, or “skins”, attached to the underside to provide traction while not traveling downhill) later, we reached the base of the area we hoped to ski down.

Light streamed through the trees illuminating our route upwards. We were entering the point of no return, if we went up, we would have to ski back down. As we hiked up through the snow-covered trees, anticipation rising by the second, we caught our first glimpse of blue skies.

On a recent weekend I visited 21 sites in New York from Friday night until Sunday evening.  I was touring with some west coast-based members of our timber framing team.  The goal is sharing, connecting, and learning from recent and ongoing projects as well as some from our long past.  I think I’ll write more about this trip in an upcoming post, as we were all deeply affected, with a Friday night ride on the Buffalo Heritage Carousel and ending with an acapella performance at Christ Church in Rochester and touring the Baroque period organ project there.

The tour left us all pretty stunned.  Even for me, who had been part of these projects.  Seeing it all together like this was magic, if a bit overwhelming.

Towards the end of Sunday, we were at our longtime clients Tom and Karen’s place in the Finger Lakes when Tom said, “Hey our neighbor Larry stopped by and when he heard you were coming was adamant you guys visit him as well.”  Wow, a total warm wind of memory whipped right through.  Larry H.  We built for him in 1988.  And when his name comes up, so do the stories…

Affectionately referred to as “Trout Point” by the homeowners, the timber framed addition to this family home was built with recreation at heart. Seamlessly integrating with the existing house, the bar and game room is a place where the homeowners and their friends can kick back and relax while enjoying Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. 

Featuring a custom woodworked bar, dart board, wine storage area and integrated shuffleboard court crafted by NEWwoodworks, this space allows for year-round fun with family and friends. The entire project allowed for creative expression in its design and execution with results that the homeowners describe as a dream come true.

Because of the homeowner’s willingness to freely embrace the talents of the design and build teams they assembled for the project; these clients are regarded by everyone who has played a role in the addition as dream clients for creating an atmosphere where creativity could flourish, and partnerships thrived. We caught up with a few of the key players who shared their experience on this most beloved of projects.

Recently we raised a pavilion/carport for Tom Kime and his wife Karen as part of a large-scale renovation project of their property on Seneca Lake in New York. Tom is the president of Lyons National Bank (or LNB), who has worked with New Energy Works on projects large and small for many years. We caught up with Tom & Karen recently to talk about the raising of the pavilion, their remodeling project, community partnerships, working with likeminded folks, and the goodwill a well-made pie can bring to a jobsite.

The renovation project itself is part of a group of connected family properties the couple enjoy with their adult children and grandchildren. Bringing in contractors with longtime business ties to LNB to work on the property is nothing new for Tom & Karen, they have long believed that close relationships are the key to doing good business and that a sense of community among vendors leads to better results.

“Most everyone we work with are customers of the bank.” Tom says. “We like doing business with people who are customers of ours and that relationship goes both ways.”

About a year ago, Dave Cratty wrote about a timber frame raising on a remote lakefront job site in the Adirondack Mountains that was only accessible by boat with no roads, no Wi-Fi, and no cell phone service.

Recently we returned to the site in the Adirondack State Park to hand-raise a second structure to complement the first Lake House.

This new main cabin had to fit into the existing footprint of an older structure with a design that was limited by height restrictions. It also had to be completely raised by hand in the off-grid setting. Since there was no way to get heavy equipment to the site, each timber was delivered by barge and offloaded by hand.

Every morning the New Energy Works team would drive an hour from their hotel, boat across the isolated lake to the job site, work until dark, and then make the journey back. As arduous as it sounds, the team loved the remote nature of the work, the commute, and the old-school methods of the timber frame raising.  

Our friend Randy is building a new house, or maybe two, as he is planning a little house/big house progression (more on this later). I plan to chronicle Randy’s journey over the next year or so with a small number of posts, starting with this one, the beginning.

Randy’s building a new home because his burned down. Put together a week without electricity (storm damage), a kerosene lantern, a cat named Barnie who jumps up on a table, outstretched hands too late to catch the spill and the house went fast. Randy got out with little but the cat and some clothes. Eventually an insurance settlement and some steel resolve provided his path forward. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but the idea is to first build a tiny home, so he can get out of the dang RV fast, and then build a larger forever home. More on this next post.

Randy tends to think so far out of the box that I often wonder if he even knows the box exists. I wasn’t surprised, then, when he called to say he wanted to cut down one of the trees in his woods by hand, old fashioned, as a symbolic start to his building process. Wouldn’t miss this, says I, so wife Maxine, friend Ari and Luca the dog get into the camper van one Saturday morning not long ago and head to his place for the weekend. We’ll be joined later when son Jake and his friend Javier arrive back from motorcycling in Canada to find they might miss this fun?  No way. Add my friend Bill, Randy’s friend Alex along with his builder Andrew, and we have a party.

For homeowners Ben & Kate and their three young children, the seven-year journey to their forever home just outside Ithaca New York was a long and winding road filled with life lessons, dreams, and joy.

“For our entire adult life, my husband and I, we always dreamed about building a house. We just wanted to build a home that we would live in forever that would suit our own needs and come from our own ideas.” Says Kate. “Seven years ago, our dream started to become a reality when we found this plot of land and we really fell in love with it. It was all woods, and we cleared a section of the land, but we needed to save to build our dream home. So, we decided to buy a double wide trailer and live in that, in the corner of the property, while we continued to plan and dream.”

When the Kate & Ben began this process and took a leap of faith into trailer life seven years ago, their youngest son (who is now 5) hadn’t even been born yet. As the happy family grew and evolved over time, albeit in tight quarters, so did the design of their future dream home.

We work all over the country, but you already knew that.  And while there is no doubt that it’s great to get back home the night of a raising when it’s local to either our Western New York or McMinnville, Oregon shops, the truth is most of us like to travel, and that we get to do!  

Out here on the West Coast, where I spend most of my time, we’ve had a summer of unreal views and sights (and sites). Someone asked me recently where we’ve been.  Lessee...  Yosemite, Leavenworth, Flathead Lake, Carmel, Lake Lapeer, Michigan…  Wait Michigan?  You bet.  

Most of our clients and much of our industry are looking for their timber frames in Douglas fir, so doing these out of our west coast shop makes a lot of sense as we are in the midst of Doug-fir-land here in Oregon.  We also feel strongly that whenever possible our timbers should be kiln dried.  It just makes a better final product.  And yes, we’re in the middle of kiln country as well.

So, sending a large set of hammer beam trusses and bents to a beautiful Michigan lake fits.

As does Yosemite, where we are returning next week to finish the exterior timbers on the top of this hill.  

Rochester Childfirst Network has been serving the children of Rochester New York and the surrounding area since 1857. To provide some context as to how long that has been, the American Civil War began in 1861, four years after R.C.N. began their mission to care for children in Rochester.

Over the years RCN has changed with the needs of the community, beginning as an organization aimed at addressing the dire needs of orphaned, poverty stricken, and homeless children with vocational schooling, which were commonplace issues of the late Victorian age continuing into the industrial revolution. Today the group has transitioned to offering community based early education and care programs on their South Avenue campus in downtown Rochester.

RCN’s mission centers on not-for-profit advocation at local, state, and national levels for early education and care practices for all children with a guiding vision that every child should grow up safe, strong, and able to achieve their full potential.

New Energy Works designs, fabricates, and raises a lot of timber frames every year. We’re blessed with challenging projects, great clients, and plenty of work. Yet every year or so a project comes along that shouts, “let’s do this as a community hand raising!”. After a few decades in the business, these still stand out as very special days.

Matt and Laura approached us about their own community of friends and family, how they were bursting at the constraints of isolation that COVID-19 had placed on us all, and how now that so many were getting fully vaccinated they felt the same thing so many of us were feeling: free to GATHER!  As a sidenote, both Matt and Laura are front line medical workers. They know.

Their vision was a pavilion with a pizza oven, dance floor, even a bath. My vision was that they had such a strong network, and those folks might enjoy a day of hard work and free labor. (Um, my vision can be a bit strange, for sure.) I did know for certain that every hand raising I’ve ever done has had such an impact that all those friends & family would feel that indeed, this pavilion was theirs as well. One definition of community, surely.

Growing up in Buffalo, NY is one of the biggest pieces of who I am. If you’re from Buffalo, or any small town with a lot of pride, I am sure you can relate to being shaped by your hometown. I eat chicken wings, not Buffalo wings. I add a “the” before a major highway (I get on THE 90, not i-90). I do not care for football at all, but even I get a little sentimental when the Bills win anything. I consider myself basically Canadian-lite.

So it was a pretty big deal for me to learn that New Energy Works would be part of Canalside, Buffalo's urban-waterfront revitalization project, through a timber frame pavilion that houses a solar-operated historic carousel. It checks all of my boxes.

You’re interested in timber framing, you have some building knowledge, but you’ve never built a timber frame. Yet you want to learn how. To boot, you identify as a woman and the field seems, well, really male-dominated. So how do you learn about, and get involved in, timber framing?

You could apply for a job as a timber framer at a timber frame company (like ours! Please send us your resume or credentials). Then you make it past muster and into the shop. And there you can learn hands-on how it all works through doing. This path can be intimidating and rests an awful lot on someone else saying “yes” come learn from us.

If we’re going to diversify the building industry, educational opportunities that are gender and culture/race inclusive, created specifically for those under-represented, that are an automatic “yes”, are key. The Timber Framers Guild (TFG) is doing just that this summer at the Heartwood School—a timber frame educational center—with their inaugural women-only timber framing class.

This is a place of "yes". A place to learn, and to grow—supported and empowered. Though the Heartwood School offers classes for all genders, through this women-only session the TFG is hoping to provide an open and welcoming environment for women in the trades, which is critically important to growing our community.

At the Heartwood School, the TFG offers an ideal space to foster relationships, make connections, and continue learning long after students have left. With new online groups supporting and celebrating women in timber framing and the Heartwood Alum Group, the Guild seeks to build on the experiences of these timber framers and build a better future for us all.

Situated in the good company of wineries near the Willamette River is a family plot with views for days. It also happens to house a New Energy Works timber frame home from 2019.

This past week timber framers Darren, Dana, Jorge, Seth, and Yoshi—with Kelsey and Jonathan in tow from the design studio—made their way back to raise a barn.

What can I say about my first timber raising event?  Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to watch some timbers fly on a sunny February day in Western New York?  Honestly, if it wasn’t a sunny day, we’d probably be discussing first aid tips on recovering from frostbite - so it’s a win so far. Raisings, it turns out, don’t stop for cold or snow- timber framers don’t have time for that. 

Tucked away on a private road along Canandaigua lake, the property had an excellent view of the waterfront and ample access to any desired water-related activities.  If it wasn’t frozen, I’d probably been tempted to stay a while and cast a few lines.

We often say that the land, the building site, teaches us how to design the home. This is simplistic. There are many inputs that are needed to start the design process, including:

Who will live here?

What is their lifestyle?

What are their tastes? Their loves? Their feelings about Home?

What are the needs and have-to-haves?

What is the budget?
 

We’re fortunate to have a variety of landscapes within New York State. Those who are passionate about the outdoors, mountains, lakes, and the accompanying passions of skiing, hiking, water sports, and more, can find a bit of it all “upstate”. The Adirondack Mountains, the Finger Lakes Region, and even Western NY each offer opportunity for these pastimes. Shane and his family found their East Coast calling near Old Forge in the Adirondacks. 
 

Upon purchasing a special plot of land, planning and projects began. Beginning with a garage that included a living space, the family then spruced up the grounds, rebuilt the boathouse, and in the final stage, turned attention to creating the main house. 
 

Businesses around the country were forced to make significant changes to how they operate in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. When our friends at the Benedictine Brewery called with a need to raise an outdoor pavilion for their customers, we were happy to jump into action.

 One of only three breweries in the United States owned and operated by monks, the Benedictine brewery raising in 2017 was a community effort and one that we will always remember.  You can catch up on that story and watch a video of 100 folks hoisting the frame here: (https://newenergyworks.com/blog/a-community-raising-the-benedictine-brewery-mt-angel-oregon)

Designed to mimic the original brewery and taproom with their close to 14,000 board feet of Douglas fir, we created the structure of the pavilion with matching embellishments, using chamfered edges and a clear, natural finish to the wood.  Just as the original raising started in 2017, the Douglas fir timbers quickly defined the shape of the pavilion and now serve as a way for the brewery to continue serving as a welcoming way for the community to gather, taste, and believe.

Guest Author: New Energy Works, Dave Cratty

We all have those dreams of wanting to leave it all behind and live off the grid.  Find a place in the Adirondack mountains, on a remote lake, and just surround yourself with nature and the outdoors.  The question is, how do you deliver and raise a beautiful timber frame lake house to a location that no roads have touched?  The answer, by boat.  

Our New Energy Works timber frame crew spent seven tireless days, traveling back and forth by barge to deliver, off load and raise by hand, this beautiful 1361 square foot bungalow.  The homeowner’s plan to utilize this location in the warmer seasonal months, created a unique opportunity to use a 3x tongue and groove design for the walls, while every door frame and window were outlined with timber.  The layout offered an open floor plan and offering visitors an unobstructed views of the private lake from this cozy, secluded cabin.

I’ve spent the last 30 years with my coworkers designing and building projects for some very cool people. It’s a large part of what keeps me so engaged. Creating spaces and shelter, one at a time. There are some pretty steep challenges: sites, viewsheds, tastes, need-to-haves and nice-to-haves, budgets. And then there is the couples thing: I like to say I’ve been designing and building homes for 30 years, and bridges between partners for just as long! And with no apologies. What is more natural than two people who are a couple, who have differences in their vision? We are often attracted to our compliment, not our same self.

You’d think then that when a couple comes together “later” in life, and both with a full and proud history of accomplishments in business and in family, that all these competing needs in the design of a new combined home would crash together like a rip tide in a tightening channel.

Greg and Tish may as well have been married for their whole lives. A thoughtful brow, a sideways glance, a pause, and whoever would speak was speaking what both were thinking. Will I be that thoughtful, that empathic, that…well I’ll say it…smart in a few more years? Dang I can hope.

In November of 2018 we had a community raising for the Mount Angel Abbey’s Benedictine Brewery. One hundred volunteers gathered early, listened thoughtfully to a strategy introduction and a safety meeting, and got it done.

The Benedictine Brewery in Mt. Angel, Oregon. Photo by Loren Nelson

Of the people who showed up to help, about 50 or so were from Mount Angel Abbey, the monastery at the top of the hill where we were working. We had our team and timber framers from companies who are part of the Timber Framers Guild from all around come to help. (You can read about that amazing day in a previous blog post, and we’ve included the raising video at the end of this post.)

This season, the Brewery has been up and running with plenty On Tap. We’re excited to be working with them again, this time extending their covered outdoor space to accommodate and shelter more folks:

As we’re looking forward to more of the holiday season, we wanted to share on a local community project we are thankful to have been part of: the Rochester Childfirst Network (RCN) Capital Campaign.

We practice the Triple Bottom Line business model of People, Planet, and Profit, putting equal importance on each with the belief that the mission of a for-profit business shouldn’t solely focus on profit. If sustainability is about benefitting people and planet in the long-term, community engagement is a vital component. We’re stronger when we work together. The RCN Capitol Campaign has rallied many companies and with good reason as this organization has been supporting the education and welfare of children in urban Rochester, NY since 1857.

The effort to revitalize and create “Natural Play” for the children of RCN an outdoor pavilion/classroom was conceptualized and developed collaboratively with support by local partners including Broccolo Tree & Lawn Care, IDEX Health & Science, and Barton & Loguidice. The outdoor pavilion/classroom will act as the centerpiece of RCN’s backyard play environment, a new initiative to incorporate more natural, accessible play opportunities.

Marsha Dumka, RCN’s interim Executive Director said, “This new pavilion will provide endless possibilities for true outdoor learning for our children. During the raising the children talked about all the ways they could use the pavilion in the spring – talent show, play, art studio, classroom for messy STEM experiments, picnics. We can’t wait!”

School has started again and it has us thinking about recess (who doesn’t love recess?) and thereby the playscapes kids enjoy. We began asking what role wood has in these spaces which brought to the discussion a recent project at the Lilac Adventure Zone Playground. A “natural playground” in Highland Park in Rochester, NY by Barton & Loguidice, the space highlights found forms for play and modern pavilions for shelter.

There has been a surge in natural playgrounds [natural playscapes] which inherently focus on wood and the natural landscape. “Biophilic design, connecting with nature, was central to this playground project,” explained Tom Robinson, senior landscape architect, and LEED AP at Barton & Loguidice.

Biophilia. It’s a term that we’re hearing with regularity these days, and that’s exciting! From Edward Wilson’s “Biophilia” meaning ‘the rich, natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms’. Research is conclusive that access to nature and nature-inspired spaces help reduce stress and illness. “We’re trying to recreate the experience of playing in the woods, in fields with rocks and sticks. The idea is to encourage exploration and free play with natural materials,” continued Tom.

For years I’ve resisted writing this post. It can come off as very self-serving. Please don’t let it. Instead, I’ll attempt to be as neutral-valued as I can, and share some of my 30-year history, and perhaps just a tad of the experiences, and sometimes frustrating stories, our clients have shared…and some that I have witnessed.

The timber frame industry has a great many good people in it, associated with it, and as I’ve often said, many of the coolest clients I can imagine. So first, think about a timber framer who is involved with the Timber Framers Guild. At our Guild conferences and our meet-ups, in the committee work we do, in the publications we create, two important things occur: we learn, and are better professionals because of it; we share, and our craft is better for it. In both cases you win.

And when you ask, “Is your company a member?” be sure to dig just bit deeper. Do you attend the conferences? Do you send your shop folk and your designers? Do you give, as well as receive?

To say that Timberline Lodge is a good location for the Timber Framers Guild is akin to saying that the Grand Canyon is an attractive hole in the ground. Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood, is the perfect location for this community of like-minded individuals and companies to come together and gain new knowledge from each other and from the wisdom of those that built this magnificent structure at the height of the Great Depression working for the WPA. Timberline Lodge was built scrappily using site sourced rocks and trees and reclaimed materials including telephone poles turned into carved newel posts on the stairs and fireplace andirons made from an old railroad track. As was said by The Builders of Timberline Lodge, Federal Writers’ Project, “Each workman on Timberline Lodge gained proficiency in manual arts. He was a better workman, a better citizen, progressing by infinitely slow steps to the degree above him.” So does the Guild, and these conferences, build each of us into better craftspeople.

“Jonathan, et al…

As I write out the final check for Invoice #9, it seems the right moment to pen a note of appreciation for the bundle of work, energy, and creativity that we currently reside in. It is not lost on us for a moment that we discovered NEW at a moment in time that was just right for everyone; Rocio stumbled onto your website looking for a builder of ‘barn homes’ and was immediately captured by the concepts and pics displayed. Everything seemed to line up:  small house, close to shop, (relatively) simple design, similar vision, seasonal timing, etc. to enable you all to pull off an amazing, wonderful, beautiful, efficient, stunning, one-of-a-kind home for us.

It is quite difficult to express the deep sense of gratitude we feel towards everyone that contributed to the Jewel…many of which I don’t have the ability to send this to, or even be able to name. The artistic, creative flair combined with real-life practicality is a major component of our place we will love for many years to come.

Please pass on our thanks to everyone that was involved. We look forward to visits from any and all as time goes by.

Sincerely,

Phil and Rocio

Dayton, Oregon”

We offer our sincere thanks to Tom & Karen for their thoughtful and touching letter of appreciation–and for allowing us to share it here. No one can tell the story of their home better than those who dream it, live it, and love in it…

To all those who were a part of our timber frame home:

This letter is long overdue. Recent events have kept us pre-occupied. This evening as we did out traditional walk through of our home, our eyes gravitated (as usual) to the superb timber frame work you completed.

We would like to share our experience with you in the hope you would share it with your future clients.

We originally wanted to build our last house as a timber frame because we appreciate the large wood elements and how it made you feel. Considering we spend a lot of time in our home we wanted our family and friends to feel the warmth and comfort that only wood timbers create.

We searched the internet and found several timber frame companies. We started with your firm “New Energy Works” because we liked what we saw on your website.

We made the initial phone contact and visited with Jonathan Orpin, he was very pleasant and helpful. We were novices in understanding the process of timber frame construction. I am sure we must have sounded pretty naive but Jonathan was kind and understanding. He gave us the necessary confidence in your company to move to the next step.

A short walk across the parking lot from the main office is the shop for our fine woodworking division, NEWwoodworks. While the walk stretches the legs, wandering through their space feeds every type of woodcraft obsession. On a recent visit to the shop, I was drawn to a thick live-edge slab, smoothly finished and awaiting shipment to its new home as a bar top. This led me to Rob, manager of NEWwoodworks for a chat about how this group of skilled woodworkers arrives at happy hour creations:

The feel of that smooth finish still bright in my mind I asked, what are the biggest driving factors in determining material and finish for commercial (specifically bar or restaurant) projects? “Usage and aesthetics,” Rob replied. “A huge variety of personalities, of feel and atmosphere, can be achieved with wood—both in the specific grade used, and the style when crafting it.”

Where’s the beetle these days? As with most things these traditional tools have a lifespan… Needing to replace a beetle that had met its end, Mike W and Alexander crafted a new one from a reclaimed timber scrap in our McMinnville, OR shop.

Freshly minted, this beetle looked very innocent on the bench. Mike showed it’s ferocity (and his!), displaying it with a more seasoned beetle:

These two will be headed to the next raising where the newcomer is sure to lose some of that bright patina of the freshly exposed wood as it ‘matures’. Thanks to Mike for the creativity and the photos!

Curious about where else the beetles have been? Check the rest of our blog.

In August of 2008, my wife Maxine, our son Jake, Dexter the dog and Annie the cat arrived in our new home of Portland, Oregon with a plan to open a west coast New Energy Works Timberframers.  In retrospect, the idea that we could just pick up everything, move to a city across this big country, find schooling, the grocery store, a place to start a new timber frame shop, customers, design and build our new home, and still be a solid co-worker and leader to our headquarters back in the beautiful Finger Lakes of NY seems a bit outrageous. It was. In the Fall of 2008 the economy was in the biggest downward spiral we’ve seen in our lives, so what at first seemed hard quickly became a challenge of far more epic proportions.

I was blogging pretty regularly during that time, largely as we built The Vermont Street Project, our modest if well-crafted home in southwest Portland that would eventually find its way onto the cover of three magazines, and be named Fine Homebuilding Magazine’s first ever Home of the Year.

Kim Son Meditation Center, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist place of repose and worship, will be taking delivery of their 10 glulaminated and steel trusses very soon. The trusses are just over 60’ long, and 16’ high. As seen in the accompanying images, the community’s goal was to express a sweeping sense of structure and space, perhaps a bit like clouds moving across an overhead sky.

For us, the challenges were many: Glulam beams that are set into curved forms have a certain “memory” of once being many straight pieces of wood. This gives them a certain desire to spring back for the designed curvature. And they did. And because wood is such an individualistic material, it’s almost impossible to know and therefore calculate the exact amount of spring back to plan for. Because the beams are held together with large steel plating, we were able to wrestle the wood into place and apply over 1000 huge bolts in total to the trusses. When we stood the truss up for initial testing, There was zero spread over the 60’ of length.

A project popped up on Instagram, catching my attention with its custom timber trusses in a clean and crisp great room. It seemed familiar and I made a call upstairs confirming this was one of our projects, designed by Carol Kurth Architecture + Carol Kurth Interiors, raised in the Hudson Valley. I wanted to know more and was lucky enough to catch Carol Kurth (FAIA, ASID, and LEED AP) and her colleague Christine Lent (AIA) for a chat:

It was easy to hear the smile in Carol and Christine’s voices over the phone. Their energy was palpable and inspiring when talking residential architecture. Turns out like many homes, project planning started a few years back for this ‘mountain lodge’ and evolved over time into a ‘modern lodge’. It never lost the main purpose as: “a weekend retreat for a warm and close extended family who spends lots of time together”.

Onlookers huddled in their coats and chatted excitedly on a cool breezy day in upstate New York while our craftsmen raised the frame for Jim and Tina’s home on Cayuga Lake. Multiple generations of the family were joined by a few guests at the site. Seeing the timbers come together and their home take shape brought plenty of smiles from Jim, Tina, their children, and grandchildren.

While there are very few flat build sites available around the Finger Lakes these days, the couple found a special spot on Cayuga Lake that is not only flat but includes a point, known locally as Allen’s Point. Open in a 180-degree expanse, our design group explained that the home’s layout is intended to make the most of the sweeping north, west, and south lake views. With plans calling for a modified “L” shape, the position of the home on the site collects those views as well as links together the north beach side with the south boat dock side of the property. (It also allows private spaces to reside in the long straight of the “L”, separate from the open public spaces.)

With the foundation in and first-floor framing in place, it was time to put the frame up. Raising days are momentous occasions, a culmination of years of dreaming and planning. We’re always glad to join these significant days as the excitement is infectious and there’s nothing quite like going from an open site to a full frame in the span of a day or two.

I had taken to saying this project was moving at “monastery time” for Mount Angel Abbey’s Benedictine Brewery. Meaning, of course, it was progressing at its own pace, and not overly concerned with a particular speed or efficiency the secular and commercial world might expect. It had been three years since Chris Jones, the project manager and enterprise guy for the monks and I had started talking, excited at the idea of doing a traditional timber frame raising with people from the monastery, the community of Mt. Angel, friends and coworkers, and more. I had this crazy vision of 50 or so monks in flowing red robes with pike poles and ropes.

On a recent Saturday, it (almost) all came true. No robes. This was likely a good thing.

One hundred volunteers gathered early on November 11th, listened thoughtfully to a strategy introduction, a safety meeting, and got at it. November in Oregon is dicey at best, but I really laughed as I watched the weather forecast. Here’s a screenshot from a day or so ahead of time:

I couldn’t help but acknowledge the amazing timing of sunny weather to some of the brothers. “We worked really hard on that one,” they laughed.

Of the people who showed up to help, about 50 or so were from Mount Angel Abbey, the monastery at the top of the hill where we were working. A willing and fun group. My son Jake, who was running the drone video, said he was surprised at how normal they seemed. Okay. I had to agree. Normal, with a bit of a prankster-ish edge, I’d add.

In a previous post we talked about ‘island living: pull up a stool’. Kitchen islands are a popular spot for wood tops, but what about the overall kitchen materials and design? What considerations are made to keep the chef(s) connected with family and guests? What about  storage space? Wood species and finishes? Rob, GM of our fine woodworking division, NEWwoodworks, and Andrew, interiors specialist in our design group, offered some insights.

“Why custom?” Rob clarified before answering: “We like to tailor the kitchen to exactly what the client wants and needs. We can match, and hopefully enhance, the way they cook, serve, eat, entertain and live.”

Kitchens are often considered the heart of the home. Andrew shared a little history: “Interestingly enough the kitchen has gone full-circle in the lifespan of our country. In the span of 200 years we’ve gone from one room cabins where gathering around the hearth was simply a way of life, to the affluent days of the to-be-left-unseen butler’s pantry and galley kitchen separate from the dining/social areas of the home, to a revival of the central hearth concept appearing today in the form of ‘open plan living’.”

On one of our typical cool, rainy, and windy Autumn days in upstate New York, I had the chance to chat with Laurie who was enjoying some sun and warmth down in Texas. We worked with Laurie and her husband Dan for over a year designing, building, and completing their multi-generational lakeside retreat home in nearby Canandaigua, NY. I asked Laurie if she would share her take on what it was like to build and decorate a custom timber frame home. Her enthusiasm was infectious and I know I spent much of our conversation nodding and smiling. Here’s what she shared:

Megan: So much is about the build site. Why Canandaigua? 

Post authored by Ty Allen, AIA New Energy Works

A week in Poland and Germany learning about wood fiber insulation? “That seems like a lot of wood fiber insulation,” was the first thought that went through my mind. “Never been to Poland but Germany was great, and it’s been a long time,” I’m pretty sure was the second.

Three days into the trip having flown into Gdansk, Poland, driven to and toured a plant in a place called Czarna Woda, and now Eric Fraser and I are sitting in a training room in Czarnków. The German-based company Steico we were visiting affectionately calls it Steico School; learning more about vapor open assemblies and dewpoint potential (trust me, it’s very interesting)—then the question came with sort-of knowing trepidation:

“…how long did it take?”

The answer was straight and clear from our sharp, young, Polish instructor, through his thick accent:

“Twenty years.”

Twenty years to move the needle enough to make a noticeable difference. Twenty years to change the thinking of enough individuals to affect the masses. Once it had entered the mainstream vernacular, twenty years to normalize high-performance building to the point where it has fully entered the consciousness of everyday Europeans looking to build a place they would raise their family and call home. The answer was at once overwhelming, yet inspiring.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Richard Brown AIA, founder of RBA, about a newly completed project in Portland, Oregon. The modern, yet traditionally inspired design has a reclaimed timber frame core combined with stick built spaces. Nestled along the hillside with views of Mt. Hood, Richard explained that this will be the main home for a creative couple—a modern house with traditional queues. We conversed about this project and the broader driving forces behind his architectural creativity:

What can you tell us about this project’s build site?
It’s a really beautiful site in Portland, which are getting to be rare in major cities as our population grows. This site had a home removed a few years back in anticipation of a development which never happened. There are great views to Mt. Hood and good access to sunlight. The homeowner is an avid gardener, so we intentionally sat the home into the shade away from where sun falls to leave space for gardens and a meadow area.

Has it really been a decade since we opened in Oregon? No. Actually, it’s been 9 years. Summer, 2008 I landed out here after a few years of research and prep just in time for the roughest economic face plant many of us have known (and I’ve known 4 others in our 30 years).

I liken that whole beginning to parachuting out of an airplane amidst blue skies into a thick but fluffy-enough bunch of clouds. Once inside, there was some suggestive bumping about, some troublesome turbulence, but not a clear sign yet of what lay ahead. Then suddenly I break through those clouds and the scene below me opens like a battlefield movie: burning buildings, scorched earth, hungry villagers with widening eyes and the air full of acrid smoke. (Yes, yes I’m exaggerating for effect. There were no burning buildings.)

That was the starting of our west coast effort at the beginning of that darned big recession. In looking back, it might have been better to hang out on the beach for 4 or 5 years rather than make the effort we did to build our business in such a setting. But I am neither prescient nor idle, and so work we did.

…and we’ve made great progress, and well, we’re pretty glad we didn’t just hang out on the beach. I would have gone insane.

Today we’ve grown to 25 coworkers in timber framing, carpentry, design, engineering, and millworks, and the buzz is on.

On New Years Day, 2015 a devastating fire claimed the St. Pius X Church in the Town of Chili, New York. As church leaders and hundreds of parishioners gathered the resounding desire was to rebuild. Fast forward to December 2016, and after raising the necessary funding to rebuild, the church’s future took shape. Hanlon Architects designed a large, open interior volume with visible timber framing. Working closely with Hanlon and the Nichols Construction Team, our timber frame engineering team applied their know-how to refine and finalize the timber truss design.

“With a 36’ clear center aisle, supported with hammer beam style trusses and 33’ long keyed beam rafters to support the flanking shed roofs, this is truly going to be a magnificently expansive space for many to enjoy,” shared Bryan Bleier, timber frame engineering project leader for the St. Pius X roof system.

“These are all ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions, right?

I chuckled at Bryan’s inquiry as we settled in for our Q&A interview. I assured him that all questions were going to be difficult and on the record. He grinned and I started with asking him a bit about his background followed by more rapid-fire questions. Here’s a look into Bryan:

Bryan has been with our timber frame engineering group since earning his degree from the SUNY Institute of Technology in civil engineering about five years ago. He had dabbled in construction prior to college and always had an interest in building materials/methods. While he didn’t know much about timber framing he was drawn to our company’s people and planet (he’s another in our line of avid outdoorsmen) ethos and found his love for wood grew exponentially once he started with us.

Quick to smile and offer help wherever needed, he’s become a leader on various timber frame projects and with our enclosure system layouts. Most recently he was the project leader for the St Pius X Church rebuild in Chili, NY. This huge roof system went up a week ago to the delight of many, including Bryan who was interviewed several times by local media about St. Pius X.

What’s your favorite word or phrase?
Right on. 

Leaving the world of party tents, awnings, and rough construction behind, Pete O’Brien joined our timber frame group finding the craftsmanship and finer work of traditional mortise and tenon joinery much more to his liking. In his opinion, handcrafting is second only to raising a frame.

We seem to be inundated with folks who love the outdoors so we were not surprised to learn that this timber framer likes hiking, kayaking, and frequents the Adirondacks. However, Pete admitted that he’s a gamer with a passion for racing and marksmanship games (cat’s out of the bag, sorry Pete!). On occasion Pete puts his kayaking skills to the test, participating in our local white water Wild Water Derby. After sitting down for this rapid fire interview, he regaled us with a few stories from the derby. Read on to learn more on this young craftsman (with author comments in brackets):

What’s your favorite word or phrase?
Awesome. (Pete’s fellow timber framer and long-time member of the team, Jake, piped in saying to me, “That is for sure his favorite word.” Based on the grin he and Pete exchanged I suspected differently but didn’t press.)

“I truly could not have asked to work with a better crew. It’s great to work with people so on-point. Hardly anything went by without someone helping to make the others’ job easier.” – Mike W, Timber Frame Champion on the Ann Arbor Legacy Home.

Raisings are often an exciting culmination of years of dreaming, months of planning, and hours of crafting. This Ann Arbor, Michigan home was no exception as our team was met with excited smiles and kind accolades from the homeowners Cindy and Bill and the builder, David (of Coppernail Construction). Our team of Mike, Jimmy, Taylor, and Randy from the McMinnville (Oregon) shop raised the frame amidst some rainy summer days in July.

A large hybrid timber frame and stick-built project, timber abounds in the great room, main entry, kitchen/dining areas. As a full-time home to the owners, this structure will also comfortably accommodate visits from their five children and many grandchildren within its nine bedrooms and seven baths. Plus they’ll have all-season fun with both indoor and outdoor pools.

Jonathan, our founder, and president, brought me into this bridge project about 5 weeks ahead of the annual Timber Framers Guild (TFG) conference. It is the beautiful realization of an offhand comment made at the Coeur d’Alene TFG conference in 2015 between Jonathan and Richard La Trobe-Bateman.

I was immediately excited to have the opportunity to work on this bridge having seen Richard La Trobe-Bateman and his minimalist pedestrian bridges presented at the 2015 TFG Conference. I was asked to coordinate the temporary installation of this 92’ long 19’ tall bridge on the rooftop plaza of the Edgewater Hotel in Madison, WI, from 2000 miles away using volunteer labor fitting in around the conference sessions. Right away I took to looking at Google Earth to understand just what I had agreed to.

“Roof top” turns out to be true though rather deceptive as the hotel cascades from street level down the hill to Lake Mendota six stories below. This did mean that every timber, bolt, and section of scaffolding had to be carried from the valet parking down, and then back up again; 22 steps to and from the build site on the plaza.

Our craftsmen are raising the frame for a large timber frame central hall for a project with Kurpinski Builder. Each timber has a multistep custom finish and a few have needed to be ‘persuaded’ into place. The best tool of the trade for this? The trusty wooden beetle mallet wielded here with gusto and precision by Matt.

Jimmy has been with our timber frame team for almost two years. He lives in Mt. Angel, Oregon and works out of our mill in McMinnville, Oregon. Even though the commute one way is at minimum an hour, Jimmy tells us he wouldn’t trade his 1/3-acre peaceful property for anything. His love of nature is also his favorite thing about timber framing. According to Jimmy, “There’s no better place to be than 25 to 30 feet in the air looking at beautiful scenery.”

Where are you from?
I was born in Newburg, New York and still have family in Brooklyn, New York. When I was 6 months old, our family moved to Puerto Rico. It wasn’t until I was 13 and moved to Missouri that I began learning to speak English. I made my way to Oregon via, Florida and Los Angeles.

What were you doing before NEW?
Before joining New Energy Works, I was a blacksmith, welder, mechanic. When I have time, I restore furniture.

When you aren’t at work what are you doing?
Chilling with Chip (my dog) watching TV or out hunting and fishing.

What’s your favorite truss style or joint?
I don’t have a favorite. I love them all.

What’s your favorite wood species?
I love purple heart and coca bola.

Design Week Portland 2017 has come to a close, but not before New Energy Works threw an event showcasing residential heavy timber framing and solar panels. On April 26th, 2017 outside of New Energy Works SE Portland Studio in Oregon, a couple of our timber framers raised heavy timbers crafting an 18 foot by 10-foot carport structure.

After completing the frame, our colleagues at Syncro Solor came by and attached four, 345 watt, solar panels to the top. Synchro Solar is a locally-owned, full service solar energy contractor serving Oregon and Southwest Washington that specializes in the design and installation of completely custom solar electric and solar water heating systems.

Rick Vanwuyckhuyse can be a hard guy to catch, at least when he sees a camera headed his way. On a job-site, it’s harder for him to avoid the lens—and he’s a dynamic subject. We asked Rick a few rapid fire questions while he was crafting a trellis in the shop – of course, we left the camera in the office:

What’s your favorite phrase or word? You know what I mean?

What’s your favorite time of day? Afternoon.

What’s your favorite truss style or joint? Scarf joint.

What’s your favorite wood species? Fir.

A tree for a mass timber project? What started as an idea branched into reality as our team selected a west coast Broad Leaf Maple tree to be a central post in our Cross Laminated Timber project. Mike W, one of our timber craftsmen and an avid nature lover, applied his skills and artistic eye from unloading the big Maple in Oregon to hand-crafting the joinery and leading the raising in New York. Along the way he formed an attachment to this “post” and named it ‘Atlas’. He shares his adventure with Atlas below:

This tree had a purpose, a destiny even. The 60-year-old Acer Macrophyllum Big Leaf Maple was selected by my co-workers Randy and Noah (from Randy’s land) for its particular size, shape, and branch structure. It would become a load-bearing post and not just any post – it will support a 30,000 lb gravity load and an 84 foot glulam beam line in our new Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) building in Farmington, NY (the first complete CLT building in New York State!).

Using some experience from previous projects, the support of my colleagues, and a little book knowledge I picked up at the Timber Framers Guild conference, I got started.

The challenge was set: take a well-loved 1980’s family home and transform both aesthetics and functionality. Our design and build teams embraced the challenge with gusto. Ty Allen, head of our Design/Build groups and our in-house Architect, gave us the cliff notes.

The homeowners built their family lake home over 25 years ago. They raised their children and made countless memories. Yet, the 1980’s contemporary design was no longer meeting all of their needs and had become dated in style. We were building a new timber frame home on a neighboring lake and we’re told that project was part of the inspiration for couple to join our community and incorporate timber framing into their lives.

Ty explained, “I think 80’s contemporary homes are the best type of existing home to transform. They are often a clean slate with open volumes and simple details.” Remodeling requires balance – the changes for this home would be bold. “We wanted to respect the integrity of the existing home, using what was already existing as a springboard to modernizing how the home looks, feels, and works.”

“I’ll give you the whole story if you share those with me.” I glanced at the white box with orange fish dancing across the outside. Crackers for information, the deal of the day. With a smile I handed the box over to Pete, one of our design group architects and the design leader on our current Canandaigua Lake general contracting project.

“So Megan,” Pete began in his usual serious-but-joking-and-easygoing manner, “You want to know about the Canandaigua Family Retreat? Well, Dan & Laurie have been looking for the right site for about three years now. They gave us a call and asked if we’d come check out the spot they’d found. They felt really good about it, but wanted our take, which I thought was pretty cool. I like being involved from the beginning, especially because I had a good idea of what they wanted their project encompass.”

“Had their three year search reached an end?” I asked as the crackers disappeared with unnatural speed.

“It had,” he confirmed. “We knew our design plans would be influenced by stringent site constraints associated with being near the water (height restrictions, erosion/sediment concerns, set-backs, etc) and the nature of the narrow, deeply sloping land. But it was perfect for Dan & Laurie’s home.”

Element of Surprise is the seventh installment in Timber Home Living‘s Welcome Home Series, following the Olsens’ home project. The home is nearly complete thanks to creativity, collaboration and — of course — a few last-minute design decisions.

Everyone loves a good sports analogy, and Greg Olsen is no exception.

“You know when you call a play in football, and then all of a sudden you get to the line and realize there’s a totally different defense? You have to change it up, right? Well, as a homeowner, you have to be ready to do the same thing,” says Greg. “We’ve definitely called a few audibles on this house, but we’ve loved the way each and every one of those calls has turned out.”

In a word, Greg encourages other folks in his same position to be flexible, fluid — open to new ideas.

“If I had any advice as we’re coming down the home stretch,” he says, “it would be to not go into this process with a hard-and-fast plan on what absolutely has to be done in all aspects of your home.”

One surprising detail that the Olsens changed as the house was being built was the walkout bluestone patio that now runs the entire length of the home instead of the simple concrete slab that was originally part of the plan.

“The house just called for it,” explains Greg. “We originally were just going to do stone around the portion of the house near the entryway, but then looking at it, you can’t not have stone there. It’s those types of things that have been little changes that have made a big impact on the look of the house.”

Our companies have long supported Nicaragua, in small but valuable ways. Starting with a Solar Oven Project a few years back and earlier this year a Clean Water Distribution System, both done in partnership with the Victor-Farmington Rotary. My son Jake and I went to Nicaragua for a week, returning in the wee hours last Sunday. Exhausted, for sure. Glad we went, very glad to be home. Here’s a short report for those interested:

he trip was organized by Bridges to Community, a NY-based secular NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) that focuses on housing and sanitation in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

What is that big yellow, blue, and red tool? It is our Hundegger, a large CNC capable of cutting timbers with joinery. We have always liked the combination of technology with traditional craftsmanship. The marriage of both allows us to produce more efficiently, work with larger outputs, and helps our co-workers have a long career practicing their craft.

The CNCs in each of our shops rough cut timbers and joinery before the pieces head to layout and hand fitting/finishing. Andy is our main Hundegger operator on the east coast. He’s been a part of our team for a decade, starting as a timber framer, learning the trade from our master timber framers in the shop and then traveling around the nation to raise the frames he helped craft. Andy told us he liked the travel (before he had kids). He was up for a new challenge and went for the opportunity to learn the Hundegger technology. Most days he can be found standing at the main control station for the Hundgger between bouts loading the platform with raw timbers.

Last week, we shared an article from Rochester Magazine all about Sal and Jackie’s timber frame project in Canandaigua, NY. This lakeside home is the second timber frame we’ve raised for a couple on Canandaigua Lake. It is crafted of reclaimed Douglas fir timbers sourced by Pioneer Millworks from the deconstructed 1930’s United Embroidery factory in New Jersey. The timbers were smooth finished and treated with oil to bring out the natural patina for a rustic, yet refined look. We recreated many of the details from the homeowners’ first home, including all interior doors, crafted from reclaimed wine vat stock. Other details include reclaimed oak flooring (also from Pioneer Millworks), a live edge island top, mantle/fireplace surround, custom built-ins for the great room and office, hand-crafted entry door, and bunk beds by NEWwoodworks.

Here’s what the homeowners Sal and Jackie had to say:

“Everyone we worked with at New Energy Works was warm and professional. We would not have the special home we have today without the guidance and workmanship of the wonderful N.E.W. teams. ”

Check out a case study written about the home here.

Existing stone walls provided the perfect base to fit this outdoor pavilion-inspired living space. Painted to match the trellis, the timbers were further embellished with elegant lambs-tongue chamfering, offset by contrasting oiled Douglas fir ceiling tongue and groove. Clipped gables offer protection from the elements and a visually pleasing roof-line.

Bob of R&L Home Improvement, the GC for this pavilion wrote:

“I was really impressed with the professionalism of New Energy Works’ crew and the quality of the company’s work. Their team raised the frame smoothly and efficiently – these guys know what they’re doing! All in all, a great experience with a top notch product.”

Photos by Alon Koppel.

To create a ‘light’ timber look and feel for a Natick, MA home, we crafted split scissor chord trusses with a rough sawn and whitewashed finish for this small-town great room. Unique details are hidden throughout the project, including architectural remnants from historic and private properties in the Boston area: old church windows, a reclaimed barn door, antique door knobs, and even a ‘truth window’ making visible timber joinery otherwise hidden in a wall cavity.

Steve and Denise, the homeowners, wrote:

“Wow. The process was fun, collaboration was tremendous and give and take (each time with a smile) was never an issue. You achieved exactly what we had in our minds – superb workmanship, yet casual and welcoming, new but a nod to old and post & beam that didn’t go “country”. The onsite crew was great – clearly good at what they do and very welcoming to an audience of amazed onlookers. We really appreciate all the effort and caring you put into making this happen. What a great focal point for our new home.”

Photo by Meghann Gregory Photography.

We installed a new reclaimed barn for the Finger Lakes Museum at their new campus in Branchport, NY. Despite a few new rafters, the majority of the reclaimed barn was reused for the new structure. The new-old barn will serve as the Creekside Center – a kayak and canoe livery that will enable visitors to enjoy a wetland wildlife experience from waters-eye-perspective.

Follow the beetle’s trail by visiting the site at 3369 Guyanoga Road, Branchport, NY.

After crafting the frame for a large barn in our shop in Farmington, NY, our timber framers traveled to Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina to raise it. Over 500 timbers and timber components make up the frame with those on the exterior featuring a custom stain. After a few days of pre-assembly the raising started and moved along quickly. Check out the big bents pre-assembled and stacked/organized as the central core of the barn goes up in this short video (below). Thanks to Josh at J.T. Turner Construction for the video!

Timber Home Living magazine is covering the adventure of building a timber frame home from the ground up with the Olsen family. In this second installment, we raise the frame:

Our fine woodworking division, NEWwoodworks, has specialized in handcrafted cabinetry, furniture, stairs, doors, and other custom designed interior furnishings for over 20 years. This year, we’ve added a customized Thermwood MTR-30 3-axis CNC router to NEWwoodworks’ arsenal of tools, increasing throughput, expanding our design offerings, and creating greater efficiency and accuracy for projects large and small. If you want to talk technical, the Thermwood CNC, ‘Thelma’ as it’s affectionately been named, has a 12HP variable speed spindle, 11 position automatic tool changer, an aluminum grid vacuum table, and state-of-the-art control software.

NEWwoodworks does the bulk of their work in solid lumber, usually reclaimed and antique species, as opposed to sheet goods like plywood. This required their CNC router to be customized to better handle material that can be more difficult to work with. A raised z-axis to accommodate larger timber stock, additional table reinforcement and stiffer axes to aid in cutting denser material, and an upgraded vacuum table to make complex jigging and complicated hold-downs easier and faster are all incorporated into the new CNC router.

Rob D’Alessandro, General Manager at NEWwoodworks described the custom woodworking the CNC will help produce:

I don’t travel and I really don’t like to fly. However, now that our West Coast facility has been running for 5 years I finally made the visit to the Pacific Northwest. It was under the promise of good food, good skiing, and good company that the visit was sold.

Of course there were important business reasons to visit as well. For one, we have a manufacturing facility in McMinnville. Second, most all of the wood we use in our timber frame division is sourced from the area. This visit was an opportunity to put names to faces, connect with people and see how wood is processed before we get our hands on it.

We started off the visit in McMinnville (MAC) on Monday. It was a chance to see our facility and connect with some of the timber frame guys that live on the West Coast. We also met some engineers, kiln operators, and folks from just across the way that buy and sell a ton of wood. These meetings were all about relationship building.

The MAC shop is nicely setup and fully functional. It is well organized and ready for continued success. I enjoyed re-connecting with Darren and Randy especially as they play important roles in the operations of that facility.

Monday night I was treated to a delicious burger at C-Bar in downtown Portland. I believe the burger was called a Chef Burger and what I remember most about ordering was the “Absolutely No Changes” tag line that was included in the description. I forgot all that was on it but do recall how good it was. This alone met the promise of good food but more on that later.

A few months ago we were contacted by a representative from Timberland PRO. In the process of designing a new boot for professional use, they were looking for some real-world feedback from guys in the field and wanted to know if our teams might be interested in helping. 10 of our folks would be provided with a brand new pair of work boots, and all they needed to do in return was give their honest opinions. We drew names landing on a lucky few timber framers, fine woodworkers, and construction crew members, in addition to mill-workers from our sister company Pioneer Millworks.

The boots arrived yesterday after months in development and we had the chance to get everyone’s first impressions. Even though it’s 90 degrees here, the guys laced up their new “logger” style, tall shaft boots and headed back out to the shop.

Drake Ambrosino came up to me after I gave a talk about business practices at a Timber Framers Guild conference a few years back, wanting to represent our work, in the Midwest. It wasn’t a model we had been using, due to the intensity of communication and service to our clients. Up to that point, our sales approach was that everything sold happened within the context of our own engineers, architects and designers. It’s still mostly that way. At the time, we were DIS-inclined to take Drake on his offer. Yet, there was something about his honest, humble and thoughtful approach that was, well, comforting. Like that uncle in the story who everyone loves: smart, funny, willing to help, and quick to pull out his mandolin at the campfire. So we said we’d see…

From Richard Laws, one our co-workers in Oregon, while working on the Hayden Residence in Portland, a timber frame we raised earlier this year:

Generations

“To my daughter.  While it wasn’t possible for me to be nearby as you struggled through labor with your firstborn I had an experience during that time I’d like to share with you. Perhaps not just by chance I ended up doing some work that was more indicative of my father than anything else I could have been doing in my current practice. You didn’t know your granddad well as is too often the case we lived far away. He was an old school craftsman the likes of which are rare today in the building trades. While he could do any carpentry he focused mainly on stairs through the last half of his fifty year career. Late in his practice he added a stringer molding that added a shadow line to the side of the stairs that runs down the wall instead of routing an ogee on it like he did for decades before. It was a subtle but elegant change that I adopted whenever building that style of stairs. His gruff nature belied the tenderness with which he treated the wood he loved. It was inspiring to watch him work, as if all his life force was concentrated in his hands. While my duties as a project manager have precluded me from having as magic a touch as someone who practices daily I always try to replicate the fineness of the work he did.

During your final hours of labor I labored as well installing this molding on some stairs I made with the same techniques he taught me decades ago using a handmade template I modified for the thicker treads we used on this job. Instead of the usual bustle of the jobsite I was alone with this task but my thoughts were with you. As if he knew I was distracted I felt my father’s presence guiding me through this pleasant work. So while you were ushering in the next generation I was spending it with the past one. As you were counting fingers on perfect little hands I could feel my father’s hands in mine. I was finishing up as the first baby photo came through my phone and I smiled a perfect smile. While my dad is no longer with us I’m sure he would be proud of us both.

Hi! My name is Erica and for the past couple weeks, I have been interning in the marketing department of New Energy Works Timberframers and Pioneer Millworks.

I came in with a basic understanding of what the company does, build structures with wood, that’s what I thought anyways. Throughout my stay here, I learned that the companies don’t just take any old kind of wood. They use reclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood is wood that has been used already, like a hand-me-down.

Not only was I amazed with the fact that they are completely eco-friendly, I was impressed when I found out that they do everything it takes to make the wood reusable, on site! The wood goes from knotty and filled with nails to clean, smooth and ready to be built into something beautiful.

Unfortunately, I was not part of that process but I was part of the amazing team that makes everything possible! Jennifer, Megan, and Craig have taught me so much about marketing. I learned what kind of language appeals to different target markets and how you constantly have to update your websites and profiles to keep attracting new people.

Welcome to our blog, a glimpse of the internal workings and details of timberframing, design, and woodworking!

Nearly three decades ago we started a small timber frame company. Today, along with our sister company Pioneer Millworks, we employ nearly 100 designers, timberwrights, engineers, craftspeople, and community members. We’re excited to bring viewpoints and ideas from our various co-workers and internal groups – we even have plans to post a few timber framing explanations (in laymen’s terms) from our engineers – to this space!

Together, our groups design and build some of the most lyrical and efficient timber frames in the industry, using reclaimed timbers, environmentally responsible practices, and state-of-the-art technology and software. Through the following weeks, months, and dare we say ‘years’, we’ll explore the pieces of the mortise and tenon puzzle, learn about design, and discover the art of fine woodworking through words and images from our folks.

Read on, sign up, join us on facebook, twitter, or our enewsletter, and always be sure to share your thoughts and comments.

Thanks for reading!

To kick things off, here’s a little editorial titled “It’s about the House” from Timber Home Living.