Construction Diary: A Maine Designer Builds His Family’s Home Completely by Hand

In the 1960s, Betsy Frederick’s grandparents’ property in Owls Head, Maine, was struck by lightning. It caused a fire that cleared a half acre on a small hilltop, close to where members of her family still live. Wanting to raise their two children there, Betsy, a midwife, and her husband, Andrew, who runs his design-build firm Croft (which makes carbon-sequestering prefab panels), located a site on the hill to create a new home for their family. Andrew relied on his architecture education and carpentry background to build it largely himself, by hand.

Part of the go-it-yourself plan was to avoid labor costs, which would have eaten into the budget, but Andrew and Betsy also wanted to touch every part of the process to create the healthiest and most environmentally friendly home they could. That meant no paint and no diesel-powered machinery, among other criteria. Keeping the plan small at 1,040 square feet across two structures—one for living areas and another containing the primary suite, the two connected internally and with outdoor walkways—gave them a big advantage when it came time to build.