The Beamery
David Watters. courtesy photos
~ by Paige Langenderfer
David Watters is making history, actually he’ s building it. Watters’ Helmsburg-based company, The Beamery, specializes in timber framing, a method of construction that is thousands of years old. While The Beamery uses state-of-the-art equipment, their work is an homage to a time when buildings were made from logs chopped with iron axes and communities worked together to put up a building.
Timber framing is an age-old construction style that involves using heavy timbers to frame a structure rather than today’ s more common slender( 2x6 inch) dimensional lumber. It was the most common building method used throughout the world until the early 1900s when the demand for cheap, fast housing required a faster, less labor intensive technique. Craftsmen began reviving the timber framing tradition in the 1970s, but The Beamery is still one of only a handful of businesses in the region to build structures that look more like a pieces of art than buildings. Watters said he fell in love with the style as a child.“ In the summer, we would travel from our home in
Fort Wayne to our family cottage in Maine,” he said.“ On the drive, we would pass a lot of barns, which always intrigued me.”
He liked the barns so much that his mom bought him a book about barns for his eighth birthday. His love of timber framing continued as he got older. He even built a balsa wood model timber frame bridge for his eighth grade social studies project.
“ It was my first official timber frame project,” Watters said.“ From then on I was always interested in architecture, building, and design.”
In high school, Watters took part time jobs working with contractors, framing houses, working with trim contractors, and with his family’ s custom kitchen cabinet business.
“ I got a lot of experience at an early age,” he said.“ I even started my own business in college installing cabinets.”
After earning his degree in environmental design from the University of Colorado, Watters took a job with an architecture firm as an apprentice in New Hampshire. A year later, his father made him an offer that changed the course of his life. He offered to finance a project for Watters to design and build a house.
“ That’ s what really got me started,” Watters said.“ I jumped out on my own building houses. They were really fun projects, all around Golden Lake. There was a lot of craftsman style building and timber framing was very popular over there. That is the place and time that influenced me the most.”
When he was 30, Watters moved his family to Fayetteville, Arkansas to design and build what is now a nationally-recognized timber frame brew pub.
“ It took two and a half years to build and I learned a lot about everything, from building to demolition to working with people,” Watters said.“ I was 30 years old and had 55 employees. That was a huge project for me.”
In 1998, Watters moved back to Indiana to join a design firm as a project manager, eventually becoming a partner in Smith, Lake and Watters. The firm specialized in high-end homes on the north side
48 Our Brown County • Jan./ Feb. 2018