Eco Timber Frame Articles

In A Manor of Speaking

A North Carolina timber frame with Old World elegance

Two massive kingpost trusses, with supporting struts and through tenons, frame the great room's colorful stone hearth, while wide white pine floor planks, tacked with hand-forged nails, covered the floor.

An eclectic mix of building materials, ranging from brick dormers and stone accents to clapboard siding, face the exterior of Mark & Michelle's timber frame home.

Mark Wray is a romantic. From his custom timber frame home high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Mark is master of the manor. He's entitled to feel this way, since he designed and built his home himself.

A kingpost truss greets visitors as they enter the owner's home.

"I like to call this my manor house," says Mark, owner of the timber frame company Eco Timber Frames. "You can see a wonderful character in older English and French manor houses as they age. With their washed-out mortar, vines growing on them and the way the woodwork ages...to me that's charming. That's what I wanted to create here."

Named Millbrook, the 2,700-square-foot, two-story timber frame was designed not to be a large home, but more of a rambling, personal place. "There's something interesting and special in each room," he says. "This house was built with very simple but elegant frames. In fact, each room is, for the most part, an individual frame. It's quaint and cozy, but not cramped.

Light and shadow play a fanciful game on the home's white walls.

"As the owner and designer of this house it was important to me that we have scale and proportion," Mark says. "I wanted each room to be on a human scale rather than have the 'big grandeur thing' that a lot of timber frame homes tend to have. There is no single huge room, yet they all interrelate really well."

Each room may be special in its own way to Mark, but when pressed he admits that the 400-square-foot great room is his favorite for its "manly" feel. "I used this oversized heavy timber truss system of eastern white pine with a gentle arch in the collar tie," he says. "It's kind of a unique truss design because there are three trusses with a large 8-by-18-foot ridge beam connecting all three of them together."

French country furnishings and an abundance of midday light give the dining room's timber frame a slightly rustic feel.

The milling of the air-dried timbers and cutting of the joints was done at Mill Creek's Saluda, North Carolina, facility. "We used an oil-based varnish to give the wood a wonderful, rich, warm glow," Mark says. "Eastern white pine tends to be very blonde when you cut it, so we stayed away from stain and simply let it go through the process of aging and gaining its rich, golden hue."

The home's massive stone fireplace adds to the Old World feel. "Through my research of European manor homes I was able to replicate the traditional look of those great Old World fireplaces," Mark says. The Wray's 17-foot-tall solid rock fireplace is made of Arkansas stone mixed with a local, flat-surfaced stone. "I used a mud-tone buff mortar between the rocks so that it gave the fireplace that lime-based mortar look common in old European fireplaces. Then we raked out the joints to make it look like aged rockwork. It really looks authentic."

Mark designed the maroon-and-gold-colored, Shaker-style cabinetry in the kitchen.

Mark's wife Melissa loves to spend time in the family's spacious kitchen. "The kitchen is the hub of activity with its 11-foot-long cooking island," Mark says. "Melissa loves to cook and, since we are so family-oriented, it's a wonderful place to spend time together."

Melissa's custom kitchen has an "old-meets-new" French country feel from its warm laminate counter tops and burgundy-colored, Shaker-styled cabinetry to the black and stainless-steel fixtures and appliances. The kitchen is outfitted with a professional-quality range, convection oven and trash compactor, refrigerator and dishwasher. The stainless-steel double sink is complemented by a gooseneck faucet. Rustic 6-by-6-inch, deep green slate-look stone tiles cover the floor.

The master bedroom's grand space is framed with a cathedral ceiling that is supported by rafters and finished with lightly stained tongue-and-groove decking.

"Floors throughout the rest of the house are 12-inch-wide white pine plank," Mark says. "To get that Old World feel, the floor was face-nailed with hand-cut nails." Oriental area rugs are used to accent the floors in each room.

"The interior, for the most part, has a standard drywall finish," Mark says. "We made a conscious effort to use colors that flowed from room to room. For example, the family room is a deep green, while the kitchen is a very soft off-white to bring out the burgundy cabinets. The great room's walls are rust taken from the color of dogwood leaves in autumn." Both inside and out, the wood-work at Millbrook is custom and very detailed. "Many times a timber frame package is sold to a customer, and then a builder, with little understanding of the style, will take that beautiful home and install some clam shell, Colonial-style molding. It just doesn't match the structure," Mark says. "Sometimes a timber frame home loses its continuity after the frame goes up."

Click here or on image above to see it at a larger size.

Mark is pleased with his choice and placement of lighting systems in the home. "I have a great appreciation for low-voltage track lighting," he says. "They are very unobtrusive and project this really nice light. I use it for uplight to wash the ceiling and beams with a warm golden tone and then I use floor lamps for simple area lighting."

During the day, natural light floods the home through custom windows. "The windows are a special type called SDL, or simulated divided light," Mark says. "They are double-paned and made to replicate old divided-light windows. The style works well here."

On the far side of the kitchen, Mark included a built-in office with enough desk space for a computer and printer for his wife Michelle.

Covering the home's walls of structural insulated panels are an assortment of exterior materials specifically chosen for the manor look Mark worked so hard to obtain. "I have this theory," Mark says mater-of-factly, "that many people want a maintenance-free house nowadays. When you look at 200-year-old European manors and farmhouses that have aged well - to me that's the perfect maintenance-free home. It's one that grows old and becomes more charming with age, rather than one that's stark and clean, and needs repainting whenever the white trim becomes a little dingy. That's why I have cedar siding, timber, stone, brick and stucco on the exterior of this house."

The roof, which is also insulated with structural insulated panels, is covered with asphalt shingles. "There must be 22,000 pounds of shingles on this roof," he says with a laugh. The shingles have the look of weathered wood, again lending themselves to the manor house theme.

For added detail, the oak pegs that hold the timbers together were left uncut.

Millbrook is landscaped in typical cottage fashion with a garden across the entire front of the house."I have lots of bulbs, butterfly bushes and perennials," Mark says. "There is a limited lawn with the rest left to grow naturally." Surrounding the 31-acre estate is a thick forest of pine, poplar and oak.

"I love this house. It fits our lifestyle and allows us to live together as a family, while providing each of us with our own personal space. You know, there's an attitude that goes along with a timber frame home. They just have a special feel about them - a warmth and a strength. This home gives me a bit more inner peace and it just feels good to live here."

Tips for Decorating a Timber Frame in Style

As the owner of a timber frame home, and builder of many others through his company, Eco Timber Frames, Mark Wray has some recommendations on how the large spaces of a timber frame home can be successfully decorated.

"I've seen a lot of nicely decorated timber frame homes over the years," Mark says. "But the ones that appeal to me the most are those that are warmly decorated with an inviting feel, which is usually expressed in the owner's choice of fabrics and accessories."

Mark recommends timber frame home owners start decorating their homes by beginning at the bottom - with their flooring - accenting it with rugs, and then blending the colors in the rugs with the furnishings.

He also suggest mixing furniture in an eclectic manner. For instance, even though his home is styled after a European manor house, not everything is in the country style. "I like to incorporate into a room those things that are special in my life," Mark explains.

"I know people who have hired an interior decorator to create a life for themselves," Mark continues. "They buy this piece or that antique, but there is no emotional attachment to the owner. I try to do the decorating myself. It could be as simple as a beat-up, old primitive chest that I got from a family member."

Because of the size and openness created by the vaulted ceilings of the timber frame's structure, Mark prefers to use oversized couches, chairs and cabinetry pieces to fill in the space. "It's a way," he says, "of not letting the openness become too overwhelming."

"Decorating this way takes time," Mark says, "but it's much more fulfilling."