Last Friday, March 15, we had a meeting with most of our Timberframe Team, which will consist of Mitchell, Skip, Jesse (who wasn’t here) and Greg. Back in 2000, Skip invited us to see the beautiful post-and-beam home that he and his partner, Llzabeth, had built in Worcester. I was still mourning the loss of our previous home to the fire that completely destroyed it in 1999, and I felt both wistful and jealous at the sight of this lovely thing. I was also inspired, determined to recreate what we had lost -- only better. More about their amazing masonry stove later.

Mitchell was a member of the Matt Sargent’s timberframe team that built our current house. He did mortise-and-tenon work and was part of the crew that actually erected the timberframe. He's gone on to build his own post-and-beam home, which we haven't seen yet. He and Skip know each other from way back.

I cobbled together some lemon poppyseed muffins with lemon glaze, and some of that great new discovery, Greek yogurt butter. Yum-o!

Solid plans came out of that meeting, and Skip offered some great ideas.  One was (since the house is so small, only 24 x 24) to use 24-foot 8" x 10" top plates and 24-foot 8" x 8" beams, thus eliminating the need for scarf joints -- which we have in our current house and are very labor-intensive to build.

Me painting the floor of our bedroom in our current house.  (It's a loft with no walls.)

Skip also came up with ways to improve the joist and rafter joinery to make it stronger and simpler. He and Mitchell decided to use a crosshair laser level to mark up the mortises on the two round wood posts (which are essentially tree trunks).

Feeling optimistic about the progress!