Northwest Custom Homes

Our Northwest Custom house packages have a distinctive Canadian West Coast feel that is at home in any natural environment.

Many people appreciate the beauty of handcrafted logs or post & beam construction, but find these styles don’t fit the budget. Others want to scale down the amount of wood in the house but still want the look of solid floor beams or authentic hand hewn support posts.

The solution is our Northwest Custom Homes. Tamlin combines proven 2x6 conventional wood framing with architectural wood features such as hand hewn logs, custom cedar log sidings (milled and hand hewn), solid douglas fir timbers, glulaminated beams, or wood trusses. All of these can be planned into your house. Our flexible design approach allows you to choose the features you want, offering a significant savings on building costs.

Featured in Tamlin designs are the architectural use of local softwoods such as western red cedar, douglas fir, pine/spruce, hemlock, and alder, to name just a few.

We often recommend western red cedar board and batten, bevel siding, or sidewall shingles, for a beautiful and durable exterior finish, along with handcrafted posts or beams for an accented entryway, porch, roof, or a unique corner detail. We offer several styles of spindles, handcrafted railings, solid wood decking, glulaminated or solid cedar posts, and even premade cedar braces for accenting a gable roof.

Interior finishing often includes log, timber, or glulaminated beams for vaulted or open beam ceilings, stairs, and feature family rooms. While we can use handcrafted joinery for some details, other beam work may utilize solid or laminated beams with concealed hardware or special metal fittings to meet your budget constraints.

Many of our wood accents can be preassembled or customized for easy assembly on site, and come complete with simple assembly details. Our premade open riser stair system or precut log stair handrail often adds that exceptional finished touch to your home’s overall look. Decorative trusses, beams, or braces can be precut or premade and designed right into your plan to more easily visualize their effect.

To provide that warm, natural look on walls or ceilings we often use pine, douglas fir, or clear western red cedar v-joint paneling.

A typical Northwest Custom Home package includes the following:

• Custom design
• Floor system, interior walls, exterior walls, and roof system
• Customized timber, log, or engineered accents
• All structural beams and posts
• Stair materials
• Prehung exterior douglas fir doors
• Low maintenance energy efficient windows
• Exterior and interior casings and trim
• Gable wall finish
• Roof finish
• Miscellaneous hardware and accessories
• Comprehensive range of options for interior and exterior finishing, cedar decks, premade open riser stairs, handrails, gable wall panelizing, stain, etc.
• Detailed construction plans, permit plans, engineered plans, bill of materials, packing lists, and documentation

Contact Tamlin for a complete list of material specifications and options.

We look forward to hearing back from our clients once they have moved in and have had time to relax and enjoy their new home.

Our cottage at Texada Island has become a landmark of the village of Van Anda . . . People know it because of is unique design and the beautiful cedar exterior finishing. . .
— Haruyo Shikano and Neil Abramson

Advantages of Tamlin’s Northwest Custom Homes

• Our fast and efficient approach to providing your house package saves you time and labour costs. By having all the necessary resources within one company, you save money by not having to deal with numerous designers, engineers, architects, and suppliers.
• We offer a one-stop design, materials, and project management support system to help you build your house fast and efficiently. If you choose, you can construct your house package to weather-tight lock up and then finish it off at your leisure and as your budget allows.
• For remote area building such as on islands, we make sure all house package materials arrive on site at one time, or are scheduled as you need them. This is a huge advantage when you cannot run down to your local hardware store every day for needed items.
• With our Northwest Custom Homes, you can build using conventional framing but incorporate a natural log or timber look to your home at considerably less cost .
• At Tamlin we work with you to customize your house package by starting with a basic list of quality materials which you can enhance by conveniently adding options such as prefinishing cedar sidings, premanufacturing stair systems and trusses, metal roof kits, and cedar deck systems—just to name a few.