Tim Seggerman bought a rundown shack in rural New Jersey with the goal of building a house out of simple materials with his own labor. “After clearing away the unhappy rotted house I set out to build (essentially by one carpenter, me) a simple modernist cabin for c. $125 a square foot using Cypress, Douglas Fir and Common White Pine available at the local yard.”

It took him 7 years to build and Seggerman estimates the materials cost him around $100,000, but the home is spacious and light with views that soar into the surrounding forest. It’s mostly cypress that Seggerman purchased from Tinsman Lumber in Lumberville, Pa., “a family-owned yard dating (continually in the family!) back to 1785 in the same spot, all the many yard woodsheds still clad in the original 240-year-old cypress”.

He didn’t treat the wood because he wanted the house to be indistinguishable from the surrounding woods. And as the woods change with the seasons from green to red and orange to brown, the house reflects these colors off the wood. Seggerman’s niece lives in the home and says she can watch the woods for hours.