About Our Timber Frame Design and Building Process

As designers, joiners, and builders, Legacy Timber Frames offers a wide range of services and creative options. Whether you’re planning your dream home, a mountaintop studio, or an open air pavilion for a community park, contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Design

The first step will be to schedule an appointment to explore all the aspects of your individual project. Working together, we can help bring your ideas into focus. The next phase will be the development of working blueprints. As specialists in timber framing, we often serve as consultants to architects, builders, subcontractors, and do-it-yourself homeowners on design and construction before, during, and after we complete the frame.

We provide custom in-house design, stamped by a certified structural engineer, for the timber frame structure alone or for a complete set of plans for the entire home. Frame prices are determined by the species of wood, the board footage of timber, and the complexity of the frame. Your home is yours alone. We will work with you to create a design that best suits all your needs.

We always erect our own frames, wherever your site may be. It’s the only way to guarantee that our complex joinery is assembled as designed and engineered. To enclose the frame, we usually provide and install stress-skin panels (or other insulating system). Once these specialized phases are accomplished, your home is ready for completion.

Frame Assembly

Once your frame’s design is final, we create shop drawings detailing each individual timber to be cut. All of our draw-pin joinery is precise and structurally engineered. When your frame is ready for assembly, we will use octagonal white oak pegs to fasten the timbers. We hand-craft the frames in our shop, near Saratoga Springs, New York, typically using native Eastern white pine and Eastern hemlock, either rough-sawn or planed. We also can utilize appropriate timbers from the actual building site, at the client’s request.

We review and visually grade all timbers before cutting, then hand-select the most beautiful individual pieces—and even individual “faces”—for prominent exposure in key positions within the home.

We offer two options for the assembly of our frames with our experienced timber framers. We will send either a technical assistant to work with your builder, or our full crew to do the complete frame raising.

Panels

Legacy can also install the SIP panels (Structural Insulated Panels) for the wall and roof insulating enclosure systems. We can either cut the panels on site or apply pre-cut panels.

We purchase panels from established panel manufacturers. We typically use EPS panels with R-26 wall and R-37 roof values; however, we can offer other options at a client’s request.