When the Dokken family decided they needed a larger home for their growing kids, Trisha Dokken knew she was going to buck the style trends of her Minnesota locale and opt for the modern farmhouse she had craved for some time.
Dokken worked closely with her builder, Nate Moran of KLS Construction, to select the products and design elements that would achieve the look she desired. The result is a cozy-yet-fresh interplay of white shiplap, weathered woods, crisp stone, and striking blacks.
On the exterior, Dokken’s vision comes to life with white board-and-batten siding and black-framed Marvin windows. Moran introduced his client to Versetta Stone, having used the product, which installs with nails or screws like traditional panel siding, on a previous project. Dokken liked the look and chose the Ledgestone profile in the Mission Point colorway, whose white-gray tones coordinated perfectly with the siding.
Along with the posts and garage, the builder wrapped the lower half of the entire house with the stone siding; because the home backs up to a golf course, the couple felt it was important to ensure the rear aesthetic was as pleasing as the front.
Inside, Moran used the same Ledgestone to create the two-story fireplace, mirroring the exterior while breaking up the shiplap on the walls. A hand-poured concrete hearth and salvaged-wood mantel complete the look.
“The fireplace worked out really well,” Dokken says. “The craftsmanship is great; no one can tell its faux stone. It really did make the fireplace the centerpiece of the room.”
Salvaged wood and local sourcing were key components throughout the house. The interior shiplap was made with real pine by a local sawmill; in the bonus room, four handmade bunks are built into the wall with weathered oak shiplap. A local craftsman handmade the barn doors with reclaimed barn wood, and the exquisite stair rails were locally hand-welded. Dokken’s co-worker made the double vanity in the master bedroom with red pine and a white oak top; layered finishes and burnishing helped create a weathered, rustic look.
Black accents in nearly every room, from the gridded shower door to pendant and vanity lights to cabinet hardware, contrast perfectly with the white and wood that otherwise dominate the modern farmhouse décor.
Though the home is less than two years old, the design decisions lend a decidedly vintage feel. “When you come in you get the feeling you’re being taken back to a simpler, quieter time,” Dokken says.
Like any good historic restoration project, the recently remodeled Old South Church in Boston doesn’t look refurbished—it looks like it did in 1836, just without the signs of age. But while the materials and details appear the same, some of them are much more modern and durable.
DURATION Moulding & Millwork is partially to thank for that. The company supplied numerous moulding and millwork pieces for the rehab, meticulously crafting each piece, including quoins, crown, and beaded casing, to replicate what it would replace. The only difference is that the pieces were crafted with TruExterior, Boral Building Products’ proprietary siding and trim made with poly-ash.
A blend of
polymers and recycled fly ash, TruExterior offers a look and workability nearly
identical to wood, so much so that it can be used for historic restoration
projects where manmade materials are often shunned. But unlike wood, it provides
a higher level of dimensional stability to reduce expansion and contraction and
resist warping, cracking, and splitting.
The church is one of hundreds of projects DURATION Millwork has supplied with custom molding and trim milled from TruExterior. The company began testing the product when it was first introduced, and soon after began offering 18 common profiles to its distributor network. Today, DURATION manufactures with the poly-ash material exclusively and provides not only numerous standard options but extensive custom capabilities.
“The product really combines the best attributes of the three major categories—wood, PVC, and fiber cement. You get the best of all three without any of the downsides,” says DURATION Moulding & Millwork President and CEO Keith Coleman, pointing to TruExterior advantages such as resistance to rotting and decay, the ability to be painted darker colors, and the allowance for installation in contact with the ground, cement, or metal roofing. “It’s the Holy Grail of exterior moulding products—will it last and will it look like wood. And when you combine those two things, that’s when you know you’ve got it.”
Custom Moulding & Millwork Capabilities
Over the years, DURATION has become very nimble in what it is able to offer—and how quickly. Custom pieces range from detailed crown moulding to robust porch columns to 7-inch beveled siding.
“If someone wants 12 feet of moulding to match a historic profile, we’ll do it. We’re not shying away from anything like that,” he says. “We want to be known for addressing the need for this product where suitable. If it’s suitable for a trim, we’re going to produce it.
“Because
we’re a single source and have full autonomy, if a distributor calls today and
says we need 200 pieces of DSC 009, I can walk out there and have the guys set
up and start running in three or four hours to have it ready by tomorrow,”
Coleman adds. “We can pretty much turn on a dime.”
Coleman also has a full-time AutoCAD expert on staff, which helps the team problem-solve for customers. For example, architect Glen Fries approached DURATION for the best way to clad a circular garage with vertical trim. Using the radius of the building, DURATION calculated the maximum width of shiplap it could produce to wrap the garage exterior while maintaining the round shape and avoiding looking segmented.
The main house also includes DURATION’s pre-fab corners, in which they cut the siding at a 45-degree angle and create a miter that locks the corner into place, ensuring that it won’t open up down the road. The corner combines with TruExterior’s standard horizontal Nickel Gap siding for a cool, continuous look wrapping the main house and coordinating with the garage.
Here’s a look at a few more projects demonstrating the breadth of capabilities of both DURATION Moulding & Millwork and TruExterior Siding & Trim:
For this retail shop in New Hope, Penn., DURATION Moulding & Millwork used its “wide” sheet good material. “Very few products could be painted this color and perform as needed,” Coleman says. Elsewhere, the shop features vertically installed TruExterior Shiplap siding.
DURATION milled TruExterior for nearly the entire exterior of this home, including custom brackets, shutters, columns, soffit, fascia, and window trim.
This home under construction in Kiawah Island, S.C., features custom shiplap siding, custom show sills, radius crown moulding, custom window casing with back band, and custom “thumbnail” beveled siding. DURATION crafted all of the pieces with TruExterior.
DURATION recently added this cove moulding to its standard profile offerings. This batch, the company says, is headed to “the happiest place on earth” in Florida.