Home Tour: A woodworker’s home filled with handmade furniture

Running out of room in a house that no longer suited their needs, David Goodyear knew it was time for his family to move. They chose to build new, going with a modular kit home. Everything came in containers with an instruction book, and a week after starting the build they had the shell of a house with a roof. It was time for the real work to begin.

They looked at everything that didn’t work with their current home and set out to fix all those things in their new home. They also planned to do much of the work themselves.

The Goodyears took possession of the house with the plumbing and electrical roughed in and the drywall installed and primed, but not painted. They would do everything else – the trim, floors, paint and all the other finishing work – themselves, with the help of their fathers. David’s father-in-law is a journeyman carpenter, and his help proved invaluable.

“If it wasn’t for him and my father, I wouldn’t have been able to build this house. On my own, I didn’t have the know how,” he says.

What he did have, however, was a clear idea of what the house should be, from the moment you walk through the front door. A vaulted ceiling and lofted second floor create a feeling of spaciousness, and there’s enough floor space to get a young family out the door without feeling crowded. The floor is tiled with an Indian slate that extends from the front entry, through the laundry room to the back door, creating a pathway for wet or dirty footwear that won’t mar the floor.

The house is a hybrid style, using post and beams that rest on the walls of the exterior. The interior look is of a post and beam house, with thick pieces of lumber throughout. Being a woodworker and a fan of the wood look, David opted to leave the woodwork exposed, while also referencing the traditional building methods of rural Newfoundland with exposed rafters and the upstairs floorboards acting as the downstairs ceilings. Because tongue and groove boards as flooring tend to develop dirt-swallowing gaps, they decided to install hardwood flooring throughout. Well, sort of. Although classified as hardwood flooring, it’s really bamboo. It was, says David, the best choice for both the budget and environment, and works well with their in-floor heating system.

A sliding barn-style door separates the front entry area from the living room, serving as both a sound barrier and to contain heat during power outages, when a propane fireplace heats the room.

Originally, David wanted an actual barn door, but couldn’t find one. After realizing the price of pre-made sliding doors he decided to build his own using traditional door-building techniques, with a mortise and tenon frame containing a floating panel comprised of tongue and groove boards. The door, built to fit the large, non-standard opening, was then hung using hardware sourced from various places at a fraction of the cost of a barn door hardware kit. It was given a mustard yellow paint job before being called done.

The fireplace itself took a fair bit of consideration. For a while, the bare insert sat on the floor as David contemplated what to do with it. He had considered doing a stone look all the way to the ceiling, then decided against it. Eventually, he settled on using a manufactured stone product to create the fireplace, then built a wood mantle and shelf to hold the TV. They aren’t the type of people to have a large entertainment system or surround sound, he says, so they didn’t need an elaborate electronics storage area.

The wood mantle ties in well with the wood windows to either side, which was the intent, says David. He didn’t want to use white vinyl windows or white trim, since he felt it wouldn’t fit the feel of the home.

White was the perfect choice for the kitchen, though, where using wood-coloured cabinets would make the space feel dark and closed-in, says David of the one-cook kitchen. With a separate dining area, the kitchen is purpose-built for preparing food, as opposed to serving double duty as an entertaining space as well. The space is organized to fit the way they work in the kitchen, with a food prep area separated from the cooking area and a garbage can thoughtfully placed in a pullout cabinet directly under the cutting board.

“There are a lot of practical things about the kitchen that we considered before we ever dove into building anything,” says David. The result is a compact and highly functional kitchen, with everything accessible within a couple of steps.

The original house plan had only a single entry point for the kitchen, but after thinking about how they would use the house, David and his wife decided to open the other side, creating a pass-through kitchen and allowing them to extend the functional size of the kitchen by repurposing a closet into a pantry.

The cabinets, like everything else in the house, were made by the new homeowners and their parents for this house, making it a home perfectly suited to their style and needs.

Aside from the upholstered pieces, David made all the furniture himself, including the full bedroom sets, dining table and chairs, living room lamps and side tables, and various other pieces.

This is, in every way, a woodworker’s crafted home.