An outdoorsy family ditches town for the mountainside in their custom timber frame home.
Chantelle and Brad Work pride themselves on being “true northerners.” Born and raised near the town of Prince George, British Columbia, this couple loves enjoying the Canadian wilderness in the sun and the snow. It’s no wonder that they ditched their house in the bustling-yet-compact Prince George metro area for a custom-built timber frame home overlooking Tabor Lake and the Rocky Mountains.
Chantelle got tired of all the noise in her old home. “We didn’t love the sound of it. We couldn’t sit in our backyard without hearing the traffic.” The couple decided to look for property close enough to town to commute to work and far enough away to enjoy the outdoors without being bothered by noisy neighbors. They also wanted to be near water to take advantage of the area’s ample sports and fishing opportunities.
While exploring the area, they found a five-acre lot on Tabor Lake only ten miles from Prince George. Problem was, it wasn’t for sale. “I went through the British Columbia assessment process and found the owner’s name, so we reached out and she was like, well, how did you find out who I was?” It turns out she was planning to sell the land later that year. Soon, Brad and Chantelle were the proud owners of a large unimproved wooded lot with big potential.
They spent five years readying their land for building. “We worked the land, just me and him, for a couple of years,” Chantelle says. “Every day after work, we would take the weed whacker and chainsaw down the trail—now our driveway—and go clear some land. After a couple of years we had a space. We had saved a little bit more money by then, so I started looking at what kind of home we wanted. It was a real toss up for my husband between a log home and a timber frame home. Once I saw the homes on the Riverbend Timber Framing website, I was like, timber frame, done deal.”
Brent Cooper, the National Sales Manager at Riverbend Timber Framing out of their Calgary, Alberta, Canada, office, flew out to consult with the Works in the dead of winter. “He was trudging through deep snow, taking pictures and pointing out good sites for the home,” Chantelle says. “He went back and made a mock-up of what the house would look like on our property with the mountain range and the lake. That was pretty amazing.”
The experts at Riverbend teamed up with local contractor Denny’s Woodwork & Construction to build the home. Both of the Works pitched in, too. “We were there almost daily. We did a lot of work on the house,” Chantelle recalls.
The building team had to consider the fierce northern winter when scheduling the build. According to Chantelle, during the winter, the local government institutes “road bans so you can’t actually drive heavy vehicles like a cement truck or dump truck in until early July.” The roads close to heavy vehicles again when it starts snowing in October.
And yet another deadline was looming. Chantelle became pregnant with their first child as they started construction. The family wanted the home ready in time to welcome the baby into the world but couldn’t quite rush the build fast enough to make it happen. Chantelle recounts “saying to the contractor, we need to have this done, we need to have this done by May. We didn’t quite make it, but that’s okay. The baby came in June. We were short a few months, but you know, who’s counting at that point?” The new family moved into their beautiful new timber frame home just in time to celebrate their first Christmas together. All in all, it took approximately a year and a half to build the home.
Today, several years and another child later, the whole family enjoys lakeside living in their dream timber frame home. Chantelle says that the whole family loves being able to walk out the door to go “fishing and hunting and snowmobiling and dirt biking and being on the water.” In the winter when the deep snow settles in, they can “cross country ski right off of the deck onto the lake for a good game of ice hockey.”
Even after all the labor the Work family put into their timber frame home, they are glad they “went forward with it.” Chantelle loves “sitting in the living room and looking at the rock and the timbers. It all ties into our geography. It’s my little slice of heaven.”
- Timber Frame Home Producer: Riverbend Timber Framing, a part of PFB Custom Home Group, LLC – Multiple locations in the US and Canada
- Builder: Denny’s Woodwork & Construction, Prince George , British Columbia, Canada
- Three-story home
- Square footage: 2,460 plus 1,700 basement/garage
- Bedrooms: 3
- Baths: 4