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.