Bruce Montgomery is building a barn for his descendants. The owner of a water’s edge property just behind the Greenbank Farm on North Bluff Road, Montgomery could’ve saved some money by putting up a metal-sided pole building. After all, he lives in the Seattle area and doesn’t spend all that much time on Whidbey Island.

In need of a building to store his boats and to serve as indoor space for family functions, Montgomery could have gotten by with something less than the barn he is building. But when he decided to have Port Townsend’s Timbercraft Homes erect a 1,500 square-foot mortise and tenon timber frame structure instead of something less expensive, he was planning for the future. Part of a family that has owned land on the island for decades, he believes what he builds now will go to his children and grandchildren one day.

“I don’t expect this place to leave (my family),” he said.

So in March, in a driving snowstorm, a crew from Timbercraft held what they called a “traditional timber frame barn raising.” Never mind that the raising was done with a boom truck and that the labor was done by paid professionals, not neighbors- it was still an unusual sight. Ed Haber, the job captain for the Montgomery Barn, said moving 12-inch beams into place to build walls and trusses is not much different than building with huge Tinker Toys. Prepared and fit tested in a computerized factory in Port Townsend, the frame members needed only to be attached with big wooden pegs and wood braces at the joints - a construction method known as mortise and tenon joining.

“It goes together pretty easily,” Haber said.

It’s a type of construction more people - at least those who can afford it - are opting for. While Timbercraft builds structures with mortise and tenon joinery and post and beam buildings that call for metal bolts and plates, Haber said wooden pegs and joints last longer. Similar structures built in Europe last more than 500 years.

The metal-on-wood joints in timberframe buildings tend to corrode over time after less than 100 years in some cases, Haber said.

Montgomery doesn’t plan on sticking around even that long. But he did want a heritage structure that would both be a family heirloom building and that would blend in with the historic buildings at the Greenbank Farm.

“It’ll match the farm across the road,” he said.

Since March, the Timbercraft crew has put a skin of wood and insulation on Montgomery’s barn and finished the roof. By summer, the barn will be finished and ready to host a Fourth of July party. A finished loft on the second story of the structure will serve as a “kids hangout” for younger family members who prefer to spend their holiday away from the adults.

For his barn, Montgomery will pay “about one-third more” than the same building would cost if constructed with the standard, “stick-built” method, Haber said. That cost difference could come down over time, as Timbercraft’s prefabrication methods become more widespread. Those methods will also cure the other complication involved in timberframe construction: Time. “It’s slow,” he said, though noting that his company has got construction time down to the point that there is no time difference between conventional construction and timberframe construction.

Since starting the Montgomery project, Timbercraft has also begun another timber-frame project on Wilkinson Road. The company has built several other timber frame buildings on Whidbey Island in the past years, including a half dozen on North Whidbey alone.

Montgomery’s only worry about his building is getting the locals to understand that it is built for a private purpose.

“People have wondered if it is a school,” he said with a laugh.

Maybe, 100 years from now.