Timber Frame Log Homes: Advantages and Disadvantages

Once you’ve decided to build a custom home, there are a number of choices that you need to make. While finding the best custom home builder should be a priority, it’s just as important to know what type of home you would like to build. These days, timber frame log homes are one of the most popular styles being built.  

A timber frame log home is very similar to a post and beam home in that you can have the beauty of wood and timber features without building the entire home out of logs, and instead have them being used as just the main structural supports for your home. The big difference between post and beam and timber frame is that post and beam logs are round with a more natural and rustic feel, while timber frame logs are square.

3 Benefits of Timber Frame Log Homes:

#1 Open Concept and Strength

Over the last ten years, the open concept home has been growing in popularity, with expansive kitchens that overlook common living areas throughout the home. The strength of the timbers in a timber frame home allows for less load bearing walls, naturally creating an open floor plan free of obstructions. This type of framing has been used for centuries, especially in older churches, because of its strength and durability as well as its beauty.

#2 Waste and Sustainability

There is generally less waste in using the entire log in a timber frame home than using dimensional lumber for framing a traditional home. With conventional homes, the lumber is cut in the forest, hauled to a mill, cut to size, shipped to a distributor then to a local building supply store, and, once on the job site, will be cut again. Wood used for timber frame homes goes through much less handling, which means lower costs. Once at the site, the logs are fit to size, then some adjustments are made with minimal waste.

#3 Aesthetics

With a custom built log home you have the option of having your framing logs visible on the outer or the inner walls of your home. The sheer beauty and strength in being surrounded by perfectly placed timbers gives a sense of safety and comfort, while adding character and a design that is unique to every custom timber frame home. Additionally, there is more choice in where to place windows and doors with less load bearing walls and an open concept.

Some other benefits of timber frame log homes

• Research has shown that living in houses consisting largely of wood offers physical and psychological health benefits.
• Speed! An “average”-sized timber-frame home can be reassembled onsite within 3 – 5 days. 
• Timber frames built with structural insulated panels (SIP) as insulation, are more efficient and stronger than fiberglass, costing less than half as much to heat and cool.
• The limited number of load bearing walls in timber frame structures allows for more flexibility and changes with the floor plan.
• A tendency to use less wood and sustainable materials when constructing timber frame log homes allow for a lower carbon footprint and lower cost to the environment. Recycled and/or local wood can be used, while what little timber waste there is can be further recycled.

Timber Frame Log Home Disadvantages

As with any type of construction, there are of course going to be disadvantages to building a timber frame home:

#1 Vulnerability to Pests

Just like any home timber frames are susceptible to attacks from termites, woodworms and carpenter ants. Properly cleaning and caring for your home will help you avoid any longterm damage and repairs.

#2 Vulnerability to Forces of Nature

Timber frame log homes can become damaged from to the elements, such as the sun, fire and/or water, making it vulnerable to decay or fire damage. To avoid this you want to ensure that any timber on the exterior of your house has proper overhangs to help protect the wood. It’s also important to ensure any snow, water drainage, shrubs and trees are not close to your home. By doing a quick walk around your log home every spring and fall to inspect and look for any potential problem areas you can find them in time, repair them and avoid any longterm damage.

#3 Shrinking or Swelling of the Wood

As wood can naturally absorb water, if your timber frame log home is not sealed or finished properly, it can swell, shrink or shift with the changes in water absorption throughout your home. Working with a professional log and timber builder will help you ensure that the builders are taking into consideration that the logs may shrink, twist or shift and can ensure proper precautions are in place to ensure it does not effective the structure of your home.

If you are considering building a custom log home but want to get away from the traditional full scribe log home, a timber frame may be a great option. Check out our Timber Frame Designs and Plans to give you some different ideas and concepts. Don’t be afraid to mix, match and integrate your own personal tastes as well, and if you have any additional questions feel free to contact us.

 

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4 Trends That Will Change the Way We Work by 2021

A version of this article originally appeared on Fast Company on December 14, 2015.

In some ways, 2015 was the year of the gig economy, with the scale and diversity of the freelance workforce not just expanding, but attracting more mainstream notice as well. By our own recent estimates here at Upwork, some 54 million Americans are now freelancers.

Still, that’s just the most noticeable trend among several that will reshape the nature of work in the next five years. In fact, shifts in technology, connectivity, and the expectations of both employers and employees are on track to bring about bigger changes than the freelance economy can on its own. Here are four trends.

1. THE RISE OF SECOND-TIER CITIES

The 20th century saw big, cosmopolitan cities boom. The best jobs and top talent were concentrated in a few “first-tier” urban centers like San Francisco, New York, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Paris. If you wanted a job, you had to move to one of those places.

That’s already changing. The major urban hubs have largely exhausted their stores of opportunity. The cost of living is now outpacing salaries in many of those places. In Los Angeles, rents are rising twice as fast as inflation; in San Francisco rents grew a massive 15% in 2015. As a result, residents’ purchasing power is shrinking.

I recently heard about a case in East Menlo Park—one of the few low-income neighborhoods remaining in Silicon Valley—where the owners were renting 12 bunk beds in a broken-down house for $1,000 per month apiece. There’s just so much demand that absurd rates like this are now commonplace.

This is one reason that the fastest-growing cities of the past 10 years have included such “second-tier” places as Houston, Austin, Raleigh, Seattle, and Denver. It’s just cheaper to live and do business there.

Meanwhile, technology is making it far easier for people to live in places other than the largest hubs and still have access to jobs they otherwise wouldn’t. Dropbox, Google Hangouts, Skype, and other key tools in the remote worker toolkit make it possible to be productive from just about anywhere, no matter where your employer or clients are based.

This is especially true for freelancers. In a recent study co-sponsored by my company Upwork and the Freelancers Union, one-third of freelancers say they were able to move as a result of the flexibility freelancing offered them.

Michelle Decker lives in Atlanta and has been freelancing since 2011. She and her husband are both working at home, so they have more time to raise their family—without having to spend time commuting or paying for day care—and says she’s making more than she would in a local job. They dream of moving to Europe and living in an RV with their children as “digital nomads,” a lifestyle choice that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago.

Many businesses are becoming more flexible, too. It’s in no one’s interest to have a substantial part of the workforce spend two hours each day navigating traffic when there are simple, easy-to-use alternatives that in many cases work better.

It’s getting ever more apparent that companies that take a hard line on working in the office, like Yahoo did in 2013, risk losing the most talented workers. A recent study showed that 70 percent of employees would switch jobs if it gave them more flexibility.

2. MORE NANODEGREES AND NANOJOBS

Differentiated labor is a basic building block of complex societies and has been around far longer than the Industrial Revolution that accelerated it. But technological change is ensuring that ever greater specialization continues into the 21st century. Particularly in technical fields like software engineering, security, hardware design, and product management, the skills required are simply too numerous for any one person to master.

If the need for greater specialized expertise is growing, it’s at least partly because the demand for those skills is changing more rapidly than ever. But paradoxically, we aren’t becoming ever smaller widgets; no one is a “specialist for life” in any one thing any longer. You always have to be ready to switch from Java to Objective-C, from PHP to Ruby, from statistical analysis to big data, from media relations to social media management.

The half-life of a skill is shrinking, which points to the growing need for continuous education and re-education. Rather than earning one big degree then going to look for a lifelong job at a single corporation, most smart workers will now follow a repeatable cycle: learn, work, learn, work.

The online-learning company Udacity offers what it’s termed “nanodegrees.” Graduates then follow those degrees with “nanojobs,” where they work for a year or two, cementing what they learned and picking up practical skills—until it’s time to move on and learn something new.

That means the emphasis on employee retention might be at least somewhat misplaced. More and more, companies need to adapt to the fact that team members aren’t going to be with them for a long time, and professionals need to adapt to the fact that companies aren’t going to need them for a long time.

My dad worked for the same company for 40 years. I’ve never worked for a company for more than five or six. Today, the average time that workers stay with one employer is 4.6 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Actually, that average is probably misleading, because some workers stay with one employee for many years, while the ones whose skills are in relatively higher demand stay much less than four years.

More certain is this: While job-hopping still carries some stigma, it’s fast becoming less of a disadvantage in the workforce.

3. JOBSEEKERS GET CHOOSIER

People are going to be more selective about the jobs they take, not based merely on compensation, but on how those positions fit with their values, lifestyles, and professional development goals.

Why? Let’s look at the trends. In the past few years, corporate profits have surged to record highs, but wages are at their lowest level in 65 years. Labor productivity has leveled off in the U.S. over the past decade, and even though the recovery from the last financial crisis has picked up, economic growth overall has slowed. In the 1970s, global GDP growth was in the 6% to 8% range. Now it’s between 2% and 4% annually.

As a result, professional growth for individuals working within established companies has also been flat; their salaries aren’t growing as much, and they aren’t getting as many promotions. So it’s no wonder that people are starting to look for other opportunities. And when economic payoffs are less than desirable, they start optimizing around other factors, such as how much they can learn, whether they have better work-life balance, or whether they can live somewhere more pleasant for less.

These seem like small shifts in priorities, but they’ve been in the works for decades, and their potential to alter the profile of the workforce and the very nature of work is enormous. Ultimately, companies will need to get used to the idea that professional growth means more than simply growth in income—and that job seekers who are more likely to weigh a greater range of factors will be choosier overall.

4. ENTREPRENEURSHIP EXPANDS

The opportunities for entrepreneurship have steadily become better distributed around the country. But there’s also a growing segment of people who are turning into entrepreneurs in a different sense—without having a big idea or creating a product. Rather than founding a startup, they’re simply working independently as freelancers or by teaming up with one another.

You may not see this as a form of entrepreneurship, but as the freelance economy expands, that’s precisely what it will come to resemble more and more. When they start out, some freelancers increase their income simply by working more hours. But once they’ve quit their day job and are dedicating 30 or 40 hours a week to their business, there are two ways to start making more money: either by becoming more specialized so they can charge higher rates, or by engaging other freelancers, freeing them up to tackle bigger, higher-level projects themselves. We’ll see more freelancers cultivating specialties and forming teams that let them earn bigger revenues than ever before.

Or they’ll take advantage of those knowledge networks and launch startups of their own. In the 20th century, the economist Ronald Coase explained how large firms grew ever bigger because the transaction cost of hiring people for short-term jobs was too high; it was simply more efficient to continue growing the size of companies and performing work in-house. That trend is reversing.

It can actually be more efficient now to get work done with ad-hoc teams. In fact, McKinsey Global Institute recently estimated that this shift could add $2.7 trillion to global GDP by 2025—a shift that creates a huge opportunity for entrepreneurial freelancers.

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To Hire the Best, Companies Need to Move Beyond the Resume

This article originally appeared on Recruiter.com on April 8, 2016.

A lot of us know this already, and yet, people are still using resumes—largely because nobody’s too clear on what should replace them. Social media? Video? Contests? All of these have been mentioned as substitutes, but they’re all kind of half-baked and only tell a partial story.

Instead, I suggest that companies rely more on third-party feedback—in essence, the candidate’s online reputation—and focus on hiring doers, not tellers.

THE PROBLEMS WITH RESUMES

If your company still relies on resumes to screen people, you’re almost certainly overlooking some of the best candidates whose resumes, for whatever reason, aren’t quite right. Maybe they didn’t put the right keyword in. Maybe they didn’t go to the right college or take the right major, but they’ve still got the skills you need.

If you rely on resumes, you’re also making yourself vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous people who lie on their resumes—or simply stretch the truth a bit.

Resumes say what a candidate can do, but “saying” isn’t the same as “showing.” Furthermore, saying something self-promotional is definitely not the same as having a validated third party—someone who knows the candidate’s work—vouch for the candidate’s skills. For these reasons, resumes are increasingly unimportant, and the sooner you move beyond them, the better.

Instead, you should focus on what really matters: What people can actually do and their reputations based on feedback from others who have worked with them, particularly when they are available online and are based on real, paid work.

EVALUATING CANDIDATE REPUTATIONS

Here’s a simple example of how online reputations are changing hiring approaches today. If you’re looking for a plumber, you probably aren’t going to request their C.V. You’re going to look on a site like Angie’s List, where you can read reviews from actual customers.

Similarly, if you’re looking to hire a developer, their resume is less important than their work history. You can see a lot of a developer’s work history on code repositories like GitHub and Stack Overflow. But sometimes developers do a lot of work for personal projects or open-source projects, filling up their GitHub profiles with large volumes of work that isn’t actually vetted (and may not even be used by anyone).

Instead, you want to see what kind of work they’ve done for paying clients or employers and how well that work was received.

There’s another problem with the public repositories like GitHub and StackOverflow: They are incredibly unfair to people who can’t afford the luxury of spending a lot of time on unpaid side projects. If you have to work for a living, you may not be able to spend hours contributing to the Linux kernel or an open-source emoji-sharing platform. Your paid work needs to speak for itself.

Just as startups shouldn’t spend too much time perfecting business plans or making their websites pretty before they’ve made minimum viable products and found some people actually willing to pay for them, individuals shouldn’t spend too much time gussying up their work histories. Instead, they should identify the talents and skills they have that employers or clients want and then prove that they have those skills in the marketplace by getting someone to pay for it.

For recent college graduates, validated references and portfolios of work can help offset the age-old problem of the resume with nothing on it. In fact, universities could even help their students build portfolios of paid work by offering credit to students who undertake educational but practical projects, get paid for them, and get positive feedback from real clients.

Instead of an internship of dubious quality, what if an aspiring software engineer spent 100 hours doing paid coding work and got real, meaningful feedback on it?

Recommendations matter, particularly if they come from people you know. Some social networks are able to do this: Yelp, for instance, highlights restaurant reviews from people you’re connected to, which are way more valuable than reviews from random strangers who, for all you know, never even visited the restaurants they’re reviewing.

Similarly, LinkedIn’s professional skill endorsements carry little weight. It’s not very meaningful when someone sees an automated suggestion and clicks a button to “endorse” a person for a random skill. The fact that a candidate has 57 “endorsements” on LinkedIn for a particular skill from people you don’t know is pretty close to worthless. But a written recommendation on LinkedIn from someone you know and trust is incredibly valuable, because it comes from a legitimate human being who took the trouble to write a few words in favor of a candidate.

INTERVIEWS NEED TO GO, TOO

Once you’ve gone past the screening phase, there’s another part of the hiring process I’d like to phase out: The interview. Like resumes, interviews favor candidates who are good at telling their own stories. If you ask candidates to describe a challenge they faced and how they solved the problem, you’ll probably wind up hiring those who tell the best tales. In my experience, that doesn’t always correlate with doing good work.

Instead, give the most promising people an actual assignment and see how they do when they’re performing real work for an hour, a day, a week, or a month. You can pay them for the test project, especially if it requires any significant amount of time. There’s no better way to find out if someone is a good fit for your organization than by putting them to work and asking them to contribute.

In short, it’s time to stop hiring people based on what they say they can do. You should be hiring doers, not tellers. Moving beyond the resume is a critical first step in doing so.

 

The post To Hire the Best, Companies Need to Move Beyond the Resume appeared first on Upwork Blog.

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Educator Spotlight: April Gumbert

April Gumbert

We’re ecstatic to introduce you to Simply Organic Educator, April Gumbert! She’ll be teaching our Oway Certification Class in Charlotte, NC on June 12th, and we wanted you to learn all about her expertise and passion for professional organic beauty.

Tell us about yourself! How long have you been in the beauty industry?

I have been in the industry for almost 30 years now, even though saying that is hard to believe.I have never gotten tired of this business of beauty; in fact my passion for it is even greater than it was when I first began.

What do you love most about working in our industry

One thing that I love about this industry is that there is room for the artistic and the mathematical parts of my brain to work in harmony. I see many people who have a flair for the artistic side of the work. They envision and create from their heart. Then there are those whoare rule followers, the ones who read all the manufacturer’s directions and weigh and measure all of their color formulas. Happily, I am both. I combine the rules with the passion and creativity to invent something new each day!

How would you explain your own personal style?

Marrying my two sides together is what results in my own style. I would consider both my personal and professional/work style to be a combination of fun and classic getting along nicely. I love taking a solid classic style and adding a bit of flair to set it apart. A fun, surprising element thrown in the mix is always a good thing. I think that starting with something timeless and bringing in something “fresh and now” is the best of both worlds.

How do you create your best work?

My best work is produced when I take the time needed to know and understand my guests and can make him or her feel their absolute best. When I listen and learn what is important to them I am doing my best work. I could do what I may think is my best work ever, but if my guests aren’t happy with the results, then I haven’t done my job.

Who were/are your mentors?

Many years ago when I went to my first hair show, my professional world changed. I loved watching these people on stage and leading the classrooms who were sharing their ideas and passions with the rest of us. Even now, one of my favorite things to do is to take classes. I have been honored to learn from people like John and Suzanne Chadwick and Martin Parsons while taking classes and hands-on workshops with them.

Then I can’t wait to use and share these ideas with my guests and co-workers. This flowed naturally into becoming an educator. I have been an educator in a variety of capacities; in my own salon, in beauty schools, in front of small to medium sized groups, and now with Simply Organic Beauty assisting and leading groups of organic-minded stylists to learn more about healthy hair color options with Oway!

Why are you excited to be a Simply Organic Educator?

I firmly believe that we can change this industry for the better by educating stylists on options that are better for themselves, their work and their guests. Many stylists and consumers still aren’t even aware that they have such options. If I can have even a small impact on this industry of ours by sharing holistic hairstyling, then I will have been rewarded for my efforts!

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Freelancer Finances: Budget Tips to Help You Stay Afloat

Making the leap into the freelancing world can be an exciting move for any professional with an independent spirit. Freedom of choice and flexibility in your work are often high on the perk list of self-employment, but building in a few extra layers of financial planning and security into your business is a smart move for any budget-savvy freelancer.

Need a hand to help juggle finances and ensure you’re set up to make it through the occasional ups and downs of the 1099 life unscathed? These tips from the Hiring Headquarters—Upwork’s resource for entrepreneurs, executives, and freelancers—will help set you up for financial success and stability.

Build a Strong Safety Net

When you’re starting out as a new freelancer, the uncertainty of where your next paycheck will come from and when it might arrive can be a source of anxiety. This usually lessens as you grow your business and spread the risk across more clients, but even seasoned veterans can find themselves in unexpected circumstances that put an unwelcome strain on their cash flow.

That’s why having a fallback plan in case of an emergency—or a “backbone fund”—will help you stay afloat in leaner times and give you more options for focusing on a fulfilling workload.

“Freelancing? The One Survival Tip You Should Know” drives home the importance a backbone fund, explaining what it is and the benefits of having such a financial safety net. In essence, this fund is money you set aside to pay for living expenses during slower periods of time, though its value runs deeper.

One of the biggest benefits a backbone fund offers is the flexibility to say “no” when you might otherwise be inclined to take on work that isn’t ideal for your current experience and pay level. When things are tight, it’s tempting to take on new assignments or clients to help make ends meet, even if they’re not opportunities you’d normally pursue.

The article also explains how to start your fund, so you can avoid the stress and energy drain that anxiety about money can bring on.

Put your Finances on Autopilot

Most freelancers enjoy the craft of coding, creating, writing, or utilizing whatever unique skills they have that align with their preferred area of focus. Tackling the financial side of the business—with all the number crunching, spreadsheets, and paperwork that entails—usually falls under the “necessary evils” column on the task list. Fortunately, there are ways to free up your time so you can focus more on on the work you enjoy.

“How Freelancers Can Manage Their Finances Automatically” offers helpful suggestions to help you automate financial transactions to minimize the time they take away from your other important duties. If you’re keen to focus on earning more money instead of tracking its flow through your business, the article outlines three steps to get started.

1) Keep your accounts separate. Separating your business accounts from your personal accounts makes it easier to clearly track all income and expenses related to your business without any added guesswork. Using a business bank account and credit card can cut down on the hassle of trying to parse out which expense goes with what when you’re balancing your books.

2) Find a good accountant and stay in touch. Touching base with your certified public accountant (CPA) more than just once a year can cut down on the time and money it costs to get through tax season.

3) Create an automated routine to track your finances. By setting up a pre-determined approach to track your income, expenses, and taxes, you can save yourself a lot of time and energy. Establishing this routine, then sticking with it, will minimize the time you have to spend figuring out how to handle theses necessary tasks as they arise.

Check out the Hiring Headquarters for more tips to help your freelance business thrive!

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Introducing the Rising Talent Agency Program

If you’re ready for the step beyond solo freelancing, or are new to Upwork and want to jump in with both feet, there’s more support coming from Upwork. We’re excited to announce the expansion of our Rising Talent program to help qualifying agencies on Upwork—businesses that market services from a team of professionals—get off to a great start.

The Rising Talent Freelancer program, launched last year, is designed to help experienced professionals who are new to freelancing on Upwork ramp up quickly, grow their earnings, and better demonstrate their reputation to prospective clients in the marketplace.

With the expansion of this program, we’re creating a new path for Top Rated freelancers who want to be even more successful based on their strong individual reputation: A new agency opened by a Top Rated freelancer will automatically be included in the Rising Talent Agency program. In addition to this, newly created agencies on Upwork who have demonstrated early success and a strong background can also qualify to participate in the program.

If your agency qualifies for the Rising Talent Agency program, you’ll receive an email welcoming you to the program. If you meet all the qualifications but don’t have a complete profile, you’ll receive an email that prompts you to finish it.

Rising Talent Agencies meet the following qualifications:

• The agency owner is a Top Rated freelancer OR the new agency has demonstrated early success.
• They don’t have a Job Success Score yet.
• They consistently deliver great work to clients on time.
• The agency owner’s profile is 100 percent complete; profiles of agency members average 60 percent or more complete.
• The agency’s profile includes a logo, tagline, and description.
• They consistently submit tailored proposals for projects that are relevant to their team.
• They have at least two team members.
• They have applied for projects or earned income on the platform in the last 90 days.

Agencies graduate from Rising Talent once they have enough experience to earn an agency Job Success score.

Perks for this program include:

• Recognition with a Rising Talent badge that will be visible to potential clients throughout the Upwork site, including on your agency profile, on your agency member profiles (as long as they’re at least 60 percent complete), and in search results.
• Access to more projects, with a one-time bonus credit of 60 Connects and a regular Job Digest email.
• More opportunities through inclusion in an exclusive talent pool from which top clients source talent.
• Personalized profile feedback for you and your team members’ profiles to make sure they’re optimized to get you the most exposure.
• Premium chat and ticket support from a specialized customer support team.

Agencies are an important part of the Upwork community, and this new program will enable new agencies to stand out to clients and set them up for continued success on Upwork.

Questions or comments about the Rising Talent program? Join the discussion on Upwork’s Community Forum.

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Why Making Offers On Overpriced Homes Can Land You A Deal

 

 

 

Everyone Goes For The Low Priced Listings 

I’ve Never Heard Of Those Interested In The Overpriced Ones

Until…

 

 

From my experience, the lowest priced listings always get tonnes of action.  Many low priced listings even receive multiple offers and sell for more than asking price.  

Although I help my clients look for the lowest priced homes, there are times when I tell my clients to consider the overpriced listings.  It’s completely contradictory and unconventional wisdom.

 

So, why do you give them that advice?

 

There are times when I’ve seen overpriced listings that have sat on the market for a long time, all of a sudden sell for below market value.  So how did that happen?  

I thought about it for some quite time and started thinking in the shoes of the seller.  

If I was the seller and I haven’t been getting showings or receiving offers on my property for a long time (probably because it’s priced too high), I may be more understanding if someone came and gave me a lowball offer.  I may start to doubt my pricing strategy and convince myself saying, “well, it’s a lowball, but since I haven’t been getting much action, I’ll work with this offer…”

And before I know it, I end up taking a lower offer than I had originally thought of.  

The post Why Making Offers On Overpriced Homes Can Land You A Deal appeared first on Gary Wong Realty Vancouver, BC.

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