TIMBERFRAME, POST and BEAM HOMES

Nurtured by Nature

by gloria gale | photos by rich frutchey

Newlyweds build a timber-frame home with soaring spaces in northern Indiana

Joe Berger had been putting off getting his blood pressure checked for quite awhile. When he finally walked into the nurse’s office at the Indiana printing plant where he worked, his pulse definitely quickened.

Call it serendipity or just the right timing, administering to Joe was Becky, the occupational nurse in attendance. “I guess my heart must have flown out of my chest,” he recalls. The feeling was mutual and, not too long after, the two started seeing each other exclusively.

His or Hers?

Throughout their nine-month courtship, Becky and Joe got to know one another and made plans for marriage. “One question that kept surfacing was where we would live, Joe’s house or mine,” Becky says.

In the meantime, Joe discovered that Becky was, and still is, a resourceful woman. “I’ve always determined that if I need something done, I just roll up my sleeves and do it,” Becky affirms.

She isn’t kidding. “I had remodeled a very spacious, 1,900-square-foot old church that sat next to the Tippecanoe River,” she says. “I could tell every time Joe would visit me, he was enamored with the home’s openness.”

Still, after the couple married, they decided to sell Becky’s home and move into Joe’s 1,200 square-foot ranch. “It was fine for awhile,” Becky says, “but I kept feeling cramped and finally told Joe, ‘Honey, this house just isn’t big enough. If we move, we’ve got to have a home with high ceilings.’”

Search for Space

Joe doesn’t exactly recall where he was when he picked up a copy of a timber frame home magazine, but he readily admits, “Becky and I pored over it, since we weren’t familiar with this type of house. You could say that was the beginning of the end living in my ranch.”

At the same time, Joe and Becky had been looking at homes on the market and were becoming increasingly frustrated with the small lots and big price tags. “We didn’t see anything that had any imagination,” Joes recalls, “plus homes were plunked on small lots with no yard, no trees… It didn’t make any sense to us.”

The notion of building a timber frame became more attractive and the couple began their research. “We jumped on the Internet and looked at a number of manufacturers,” Joe says. “We were impressed with North Woods Joinery in Cambridge, VT, not only with their approach to design, but choice of wood species and their designer, Steven Allen.”

Though the Bergers never actually made the trip from Indiana to Vermont, they contacted the company via phone and email. Joe, a computer specialist, was familiar with using a computerized architectural drawing program. “We decided to map out room sizes then let North Woods refine our ideas,” Becky says.

The plans went back and forth between the Bergers and North Woods until both parties were

LEFT: It was love at first sight for Joe and Becky – for each other and for timber framing. They modified a Cape Cod style home to give them the vaulted ceilings they craved.

OPPOSITE: Becky, who once remodeled a church to create a distinctive home for herself, eagerly tackles home improvement projects. She created the stone wall around the patio outside their new home.