The design of your timber frame home will determine how well you live in it and how much you enjoy it. Size does matter and with careful planning, a smaller home can provide more appropriate and more liveable space than a much larger home. There is much to be said of the “human scale”. We all live more comfortably in space that fits our scale.
The style of your new home will be your next critical decision. The style should fit with the local vernacular. It should look and feel like it belongs in the area. If you are building in an area of eclectic homes, many styles built over many years, you have lots of options. If you are building in an area where the homes are more similar than dissimilar, think about a home that will blend in. Mistakes, such as building a log home in an area of very traditional homes, will decrease the value of your home. Keep colors and finishes in mind as you work on the design of your home. While we each want our homes to be unique and charming, we don’t want to own the home that everyone means when they say “oh, yes, that house”. Timeless architecture will serve you much better than a trendy style. By building a home with fewer corners and using simple geometry you maximize your budget and minimize building materials.
The size of your home should be determined by the needs of your family. If your family visits twice a year and there are sixteen people in your home for three days, do you need to build to accomodate sixteen people for the other three hundred and forty six days of the year? A timber frame, hybrid, or panelized home will feel larger than a conventionally framed or modular home. There are fewer structural wall requirements, fewer halls, higher ceilings with more volume. Open spaces accomodate groups of people more easily than smaller, enclosed rooms. Think seriously about the long term issues of energy usage and maintenance and about the shorter term costs to build and the extra materials required to construct your home. Smaller requires fewer resources to build and fewer resources to maintain. Careful planning as you design your home will pay off long term.
Energy efficiency will be designed into your home. Design a well insulated home with high performance windows. Design for sustainable energy with passive solar, daylighting, and natural ventilation.