Featured in Real-Estate

Windows on the World
Niantic post and beam serves up Sound views

By Joanne M. Godfrey
Published on 05/03/2002

The neighbors thought the Malones were crazy. They were putting up a house with no windows and doors? And on that small, hilly little lot?

About two years ago, Jim and Joan Malone began building a post-and-beam house on Giants Neck Beach in Niantic. A conventional “stick-built house” is built with 2- by 4-inch uprights (studs) and sheathed in plywood on the outside and Sheetrocked on the inside.

A stick-built house is supported by the walls. But a
post-and-beam house is constructed by fitting the beams into the posts to support the house and appear inside. And yes, the outside sheathing is composed of specially insulated panels that are placed outside the posts and beams.

With no windows and doors cut until later in the process, at this early stage, a post-and-beam certainly does look like a closed box. Unlike the neighbors, however, Joan and Jim knew the outcome.

Earlier, the Malones had drawn plans and given them to an architect to finalize. Jim is one of the rare homeowner-general contractors; he would do it again. He says he had a lot of summer construction experience growing up.

“We had had a post-and-beam family room in our former house in Avon,” says Joan. “And we knew we wanted that look.”

By last July the Malones had largely finished the house, which is not for sale, and moved in.

“That look” that Joan mentions is most prominent in the great room. Visitors enter the room off the deck and walk into a space with soaring cathedral ceilings and light pouring in everywhere from three directions of high windows. When combined with various species of warm-looking wood, the ceiling is almost breathtaking.

The house faces south, giving a view of Long Island Sound on three sides of the combination living-dining area and tops off the open feeling.

“All the structural members are Douglas fir,” says Jim. “It's stronger than pine. It has fewer knots and is a different color.” The ceiling is pine boards, which complement the Douglas fir.

Three high windows are awning style and are each grouped with quarter-round windows to soften the treatment. The awning windows open and close electrically, cooling the room in moments.

The room and its light are especially eye-catching because three gables open up the space more than a regular cathedral ceiling. A fourth main gable opens to a balcony overlooking the room and outdoors. (Altogether, Jim counts, there are four main gables and five smaller ones in the house.)

At people-level, the room is essentially all windows and doors to catch the light and view across the wraparound deck.

“The deck is ironwood,” says Jim. “The wood is so heavy and so dense, it won't float. If we left it alone, it would turn gray. But we'll put on Penofin penetrating oil” to retain the light brown look. Under the deck is a two-car garage.

Next to the great room, the kitchen, too, enjoys the openness from the generous gables. Only hanging cabinets and a high counter separate the two rooms. A bedroom and bath are beyond the kitchen.

Four gables ruled out most builders

But before construction, it was those four gables that ruled out most post-and-beam builders.

Jim says, “Don Barber (of Stonington Post & Beam Homes, 860-376-1576, www.stonington-postandbeam.com) was the only one who would build a four-gabled post-and-beam.” With a lot of only 0.13 acres and a house plan of 2,250 feet, the four main gables were vital to opening up the interior space.

In fact, all the gables were critical to the house plan, for the Malones had to meet the Giants Neck Beach Association's height requirement of 28 feet. And that was measured from the lowest point on the steep property to the highest. So with a lower roof than originally planned, the Malones gabled wherever possible to create roof extension and thus height.

Construction really began at Don Barber's location.

“Don made us a model,” says Jim. “Then he assembled the entire full-sized frame on his property, disassembled it and brought it here to reassemble.”

Then Don began sheathing the exterior with 5-inch-thick “sandwiched” panels of plywood, foam,
Styrofoam and Sheetrock. The panels are 4 feet by 12 feet, each weighing about 100 pounds. A crane with “meat hooks” raised the panels into position. Screws held them in place, while a spline slid along panel grooves to snug them together.

“To put a post-and-beam together on the job is quicker than to construct a stick-built,” says Jim, because the complex fitting was completed previously at Don's location.

The roof, with its 7-inch panels, went on last. Both the roof and exterior walls were then finished with fairly traditional materials. The siding, installed by their son, is vinyl, with 4-foot lengths abutted to hide the seams.

“Inside, my son and I did the heating,” says Jim. “I did the electrical, and we hired two of Don's crew to do carpentry.” Their son also did the vinyl siding. The Malones hired a contractor to do the rough
plumbing, and Joan did the staining and painting.

The house — even the basement and garage — has radiant heat in the floors, which, of course, means no hot-water baseboard radiators in rooms or large hot-air ducts hidden in the ceiling and
walls. New England Service and Controls of Voluntown did the work, which included air conditioning installation.

The air conditioning ducts that appear in the ceiling or floors are only about three-inch circles. The air coming out of these small openings is forced harder than large-duct air-conditioning systems. But the force or coldness of the entering air doesn't annoy people, Joan says. In the basement are small flexible ducts that lead from the standard outside compressor.

But a visitor climbing the stairs to the balcony isn't thinking about the mechanical aspects of the house. The light and view of the Sound are even more noticeable on this second floor. The balcony serves as Jim and Joan's home office.

Down the hall from the balcony is the master bedroom, the last room upstairs in the extended fourth gable. This room, in particular, could have suffered from the Giants Neck Beach Association's 28-foot height limit, because the room sits on the highest part of the lot.

But two gables at each side of the room lift the ceiling to an airy space. Dormers — which have roofs lower than the ridgeline of the main roof — would have seem cramped. A third bedroom and bath complete the second floor.

Although they seemed not to have run into major stumbling blocks, Joan and Jim have advice for
those interested in post-and-beam construction.

“It's more complicated than a conventional house,” says Jim. “You need to understand how it's done. Look at the builder's other work.”

“Walk through their customer's houses, if possible,” says Joan.