Labor of Love - Husband builds wife her dream home. - Nspire Magazine

Some husbands express their love with diamonds, others with flowers.
Jared Durheim chose wood.

Jared hand hewn the wood and did all the timber frame work on the home.

In fact, Jared went with the equivalent of three semi-trucks full, all used to build his wife Carla her dream home.

And a dream it is.

Tucked in the rolling hills just outside Green Bluff, the Durheim home is as much a study in architecture as it is in craftsmanship. Impressive beam work. Intricate carvings. Hewn wood that Jared cut himself.

And it stands as a testament to a husband’s devotion.

I really wanted to bless my wife,” he says. “She’s seen me work on Christmas Eve so I won’t blow a deadline. She’s seen me do this for families. The heart was really for my family. It’s completely built around what our family wanted or needed.”

Spilker Masonry gave Jared stone for his house. There wasn’t enough, so he mixed in brick. The result is an old world look that adds loads of character.

Jared knows a little something about wood. He owns Durheim Timberworks, a company that builds custom timber frames. Even though he had the resources to have the home built, it would have been far too costly to build it the way he wanted.

So he did it himself.

He worked nights, weekends and in between company projects. The couple moved in Thanksgiving 2017, five years after Jared started the house.

“I had to work on it when I could,” he says.

Jared had help with the second-floor railing, which needed to be bent and twisted. “The hand rail weighs about 1,000 pounds,” he says.

Jared did all the millwork, ironwork and design. And when it came to constructing, he did that, too. He leaned on James Fish of Fish Carpentry for the fi nishing work and Jason Waldo, who turned masonry into an art form. An occasional visit from a friend helped with some of the two-person projects, but Jared did the heavy lifting — literally.

“I cut the whole thing up by myself,” he says. “I can’t afford my work. I have to do it like a hot rod. I can’t go buy a hot rod. I just put it together here and there.”

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Jared sourced the wood from all over. Some of it is reclaimed from buildings. Other pieces he acquired in his travels over the years. All of it has a story. And that’s important to Jared. He could point to each beam in the house, each piece of timber and tell you something about it. It all carries meaning, and that’s what inspires Jared’s work.

“I think I made building more than a job,” he says. “That’s how I can work the late nights and crazy hours. That does something for me. And that’s what I will want my grandkids to know. You don’t compromise. You do your best.”