Award Winning Timber Frame Home

This remarkable house was built at an exclusive subdivision near Lake Tahoe.

The site is gently sloping, and at a point where the native pine forest meets the mountain sage ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Environmental preservation was of the highest importance, and severe architectural restrictions were imposed to ensure a design sensitive to the vegetation and local features.

This house, above a golf course fairway and lake, had to be built to preserve all the Jeffrey pines on the site. All construction was limited to within five feet of the building envelope, making a pre-cut timber frame an attractive building system.

In addition, the house was designed with the features and details of the local turn-of-the-century lodges, including exposed rafter tails, local stone, and rich detailing.

The entry on the west side leads directly to a dropped living room with a featured custom fireplace. Except for the Douglas fir framing, the entire wall is glazed, opening out to the main view.

The fireplace is the heart of the home, and features elaborate stone work and custom hand-hammered copper decoration. To the north or left is a sunken dining room at the same level as the living, a family room with a second fireplace, and a large, customized kitchen. A faceted multi-season porch is designed for screens in the summer and glazing in the winter.

Most of the house is cathedral space, showing off the timber framing and true mortise and tenon joinery, but there are two additional bedrooms and a bath over the master bedroom suite. Over the two-car garage is a self-contained guest suite, with bath, closet, sink and refrigerator.

Perhaps the most satisfying part of the project was working out the complex joinery needed to timber frame the angled wings into the splayed central core. The resulting Douglas fir timbers and glued-laminated beams became both decoration and the structure of the building, which must sustain both seismic and a 190-pound per square foot snow load.