A great room on Lake of Bays

One of the frames that our company raised this year was a timber frame great room for a cottage on Lake of Bays that we were doing as a turn-key project. Timber frames represent a traditional building method that uses a skeletal framework of both large and small wooden members fastened to each other with wood joinery. Principal members are joined together with elaborate mortice and tenon joints and locked together with wooden pegs.

The mortice and tenon joint is like a pocket and a tongue and is a very old method of attaching wooden members together- examples of it can be found in the furniture inside King Tut's tomb in Egypt, the Roman built Pantheon in Rome and the great cathedrals of Europe- Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey.

The timber frame that we raised this summer was no cathedral but it was beautiful to us who crafted it, and to the owner, who came to watch it being raised. It contributes to what we call a hybrid home - partly conventional construction and partly timber framed. It incorporates the grandeur of the tall cathedral space in the living area with the more affordable 2 x 6 construction used throughout the rest of the building. Combining the old, time proven, method of timber joinery with the new, highly insulated exterior envelopes, is an example how Portico Timber Frames stays on the cutting edge of ancient technology!