The story below is from our May/June 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Photos By Bob Sowder
When the building site is so steep, only a timber frame kit home will do.
When building their new home at the base of Mill Mountain, Bradley and Angela Yarbrough took “Save the Trees” literally. Buying a wooded lot that no one else would tackle because of the slope gave the Yarbroughs the opportunity to do just that. In fact, they petitioned the city to rezone the property so they could move the mandated set back to save a huge double Sycamore tree from removal.
“And the cherry tree,” says Angela, mom of two college students she homeschooled and the organizer of this construction job.
With an empty nest, the Yarbroughs wanted to downsize. Loving the outdoors, hiking, biking, and the entertainment that downtown offers, finding the unwanted lot in the Walnut Hill neighborhood was like finding buried treasure—except for the incline. To make it work, they needed to shrink their footprint. That led them to purchase a Logangate Timber Home with a footprint of 150 square feet.
Bradley and Angela knew they wanted to do most of the work themselves, but they needed help. Enter Chip Cressman from Cressman Construction. His job was to get the home dried in so that these go-getting DIY-ers could do their magic.
“I took them from setting the I-beams on the foundation to the roof papered and the walls weather tight,” Cressman says.
When you say do it yourself, Bradley and Angela do. From clearing brush and removing dead trees to pouring concrete, hand-digging trenches, and laying pipe, the Yarbroughs did everything they possibly could themselves.
“Budget was a big factor,” Angela says. “And Chip was great to work with. On board with all the DIY as we went along.”
On Choosing a Kit Home
Logangate Timber Homes come as kits. The Yarbroughs chose this style home to give them the square footage they wanted (not a lot) with a small footprint. The cantilevered main floor achieves this beautifully.
“The homes are customizable,” Bradley, an elementary school librarian with Roanoke County schools says, “and I did quite a bit of customizing. But Logangate was great to work with through the whole process.”
One customization he made to the smallest model Logangate offers was to change room sizes.
“A room dedicated to something that we spend maybe an hour a week doing, like laundry,” says Angela, “doesn’t come close to making the cut. We wanted to have our spacious open living area to enjoy while the other parts of the house are beautifully functional but no larger than they need to be.”
So, they chose to go with a smaller bedroom with built-in storage and nix the room dedicated to laundry by putting the washer in unused space in the bathroom. Moving the laundry to the bathroom freed up space for a mud room with parking for their bikes.
“We knew,” says Angela, “every square foot of a house is a square foot that we have to heat, cool, clean, maintain and repair.”
Lincoln Logs meet Erector Set
Once the Yarbroughs had the site prep completed, and the kit arrived, Cressman could get to work. Never having worked with a Logangate product before, he was intrigued.
“The kit was broken down enough to fit into a small box truck,” he says. “The largest piece was only eight by eight. And even some of the windows were already installed.”
Those windows proved to be the home’s greatest feature, overlooking the greenway which Bradley takes every morning to school on his bike, downtown, and the mountains. But the view came with a price and Cressman’s biggest challenge—the terrain.
“When we were working on the downhill side of the site,” he says, “we were really high off the ground. We were like four stories up.” The steepness wasn’t just a challenge for the building, but for also moving materials around.
Otherwise, following the architectural drawing and parts list provided by Logangate the process of assembling this kit home was pretty straightforward.
“It was like Lincoln Logs meet Erector Set,” Cressman says.
Once Cressman’s job was done, the Yarbroughs hired other subs to do things like the roof, siding, plumbing, and electrical. Things like installing interior doors, cabinetry, lighting, and finish plumbing, Bradley and Angela did themselves. They finished the decks, installed the cypress siding on the house front, painted, laid flooring, and probably a million other things that the average homeowner gives little thought to.
“We did a lot of research,” Angela says.
“And watched a lot of YouTube,” Bradley adds.
The best part of the process
For Cressman, it was doing something new. “Being able to do something with out-of-the-ordinary architecture was nice,” he says. “It was rewarding seeing it all come together.”
“I think the best thing about doing this,” says Angela, “is that we did it together. And, we feel so lucky to be at the foot of Mill Mountain Park.”
… for more from our May/June 2019 issue, Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
