Origins

My brother, Adam, and I own Pfiffner Design Build. We have been in business for 13 years in Missoula, Montana. Adam and I both started into the building trades when we were teenagers. It wasn’t until we came out to Montana from Wisconsin and started working for some timber framing companies that we discovered the techniques that would become our passion. After spending years mastering all aspects of building with logs and timbers, in all varieties of settings, we set up shop here for a couple of reasons: it’s a great place to do timber frame building--many people are familiar with and value the techniques, and there’s a strong market for custom homes. And, we can’t lie, Montana is a great place to recreate!

On our blog, we’re going to delve into some of the techniques that we use in our trade. To start off, let’s look at the basics of what it means when we say “timber framing.”

Timber frame homes are built with real wood joinery as the main frame of the home. With wood joinery—mortise and tenon joinery for example--the joints are created with the “load” or weight that they will have to bear firmly in mind. There’s a male and female part with a peg driven through it to secure the joint. So, there are no metal fasteners or other types of fasteners of any kind--just the wood fitting together and secured with the peg.

This is the way it's been done for hundreds of years. These types of homes are known to be the longest lasting wooden structures in the world, even when faced with the forces of nature.

Don’t confuse this type of structure with a stacked log home; it’s very different. With a timber frame home, you have more options in the way that you insulate it. For example, you can use straw bale, structural insulation panels (SIPS), or rastra (a slurry of concrete and Styrofoam). The wood frame is visible on the inside of the house--it’s set to the inside, which allows a lot of options for insulating on the outside, and it can be a very beautiful aesthetic effect to see the timber exposed on the inside of the home.

As I said, timber framing is an old technique. It’s how people built homes for years simply using hand tools. They figured out if you made a joint and put a peg in it, it would hold. Although the basic techniques of it seem simple, there’s a lot more calculation involved than meets the eye. Even the simplest structures are based on geometry and trigonometry--you need these skills to calculate the pressure points and the thrusts and loads, and to determine, for example, how big the pegs need to be.

Every project that we take on presents different challenges. Every project is different; and in some ways it’s always like starting over. The math has to be redone; the techniques re-investigated. Sometimes that’s frustrating, but after the first week we get into the flow and it’s great. And, we are almost always heavily involved in the design process. We work with the home owners, architects, or designer, and often times, all of them. It is a team effort and that is an essential part of the initial process.

Timber frame building is like a found-object project. Almost all of our projects use reclaimed timber, so we have first to search for the materials. We source our materials locally as much as possible. In Missoula, we work with Heritage Timber (Gary and Becky Delp) quite a bit. We also work with Superior Hardwoods, Timeless Timbers, and others. We deal locally whenever we can, but we have to find the right materials in terms of aesthetics and engineering. We sometimes source materials from other parts of the region such as Belgrade, MT, and Kamiah, ID. It’s not unusual for us to spend eight hours at a time sorting through materials in a yard, hours from home.

From sourcing onwards, timber frame building is harder than working with new timber. Also, the material is more expensive, sometimes a lot more, than new timber. Then there’s the de-nailing and de-metaling process as well as a pressure washing process to get the dirt out, and then the math, milling, and joinery process begins. By the time we go through all of these steps, we are more than familiar with the structures we build. We pretty much live in them. It’s an amazing technique that results in stunning, one of a kind structures.

About Pfiffner Design Build

Building a custom home can be a daunting task. At Pfiffner Design Build we have the experience and expertise to communicate with professionals from across the trades to help simplify this process for you. Using old-world techniques and modern ingenuity, we find simple ways to build beautiful things, uniting functional demands, complex designs, and our client's vision. Like our clients, we believe in quality and individuality. Our work reflects our passion, unique skill set, and commitment to excellence. Every client and every batch of timbers says something a little different. We listen to our client, the wood, and the landscape to construct exceptional custom doors and timber frame homes.