Scope
Single-story house & adjoining rooms
Abacus Fine Carpentry
Abacus Fine Carpentry
Selected Work · No. 01
A single-story house that lies down in its clearing — long, low, and lined in the wood the site is made of.
Single-story house & adjoining rooms
Cedar cladding · wood soffits · slatted screens · window joinery
Regional cedar & fir, Pacific Northwest
A Northwest design-build team
Build the house out of the forest it stands in — then hold the line, board by board, so the wood reads as one calm surface.
The site gave the brief: a wet clearing ringed by second-growth forest, with a still pond the house would sit beside and be doubled in. Our part was the wood — cladding, soffits, screens, and trim run long and low so the building lies down in the landscape rather than stands against it. When a house is this quiet, there is nowhere for a sloppy joint to hide; the calm is the craft.
Every exposed board was selected for straight, consistent grain and set to a coursing that carries unbroken around corners and across openings. Cladding was hung on cleats and battens rather than face-fixed where it could be, so the wall can breathe and move; the slatted screens were spaced to a single module, so the eye reads rhythm before it reads any one piece. Wood was chosen close to home, from working forests, and finished to be renewed rather than replaced.
Regional cedar and fir from certified working forests. Milled near the site, it travels little and keeps its stored carbon locked in place for the life of the building — the wall is a climate asset, not just a surface.
Tongue-and-groove run to land its joints on the framing lines, so the ceiling of the eave reads as a single surface travelling out into the trees. Old joinery, doing quiet modern work.
Cladding hung on cleats and battens rather than glued, so boards can be taken down clean and re-milled or reused — finish carpentry detailed for a circular economy, where the house is a material bank for the next one.
Build a house out of the forest it stands in — and detail it so it can return there.