LBI Partners With Natural Element Homes to Build Custom Log and Timber Homes

We are glad to share some news. LBI has partnered with Natural Element Homes to bring custom log and timber homes to our clients across the south metro. It joins the design expertise of a national leader with a local Minnesota crew that knows how to build here, on your land, through our winters.

Who Natural Element Homes is

Natural Element Homes is a national leader in designing, supplying, and building log and timber homes. The company is based in Sweetwater, Tennessee, and works through a nationwide network of Signature Builders. That network is how a Tennessee design house reaches a family building outside Prior Lake or Chaska. They handle the plans and the materials. A local builder carries out the construction.

For us, the partnership adds a whole category to what we can offer. Our custom home work and timber frame builds now draw on Natural Element's in-house drafting and design team, so the homes we put up here come from people who work in log and timber every day.

Designing your home in the Virtual Design Center

One thing that stood out to us is how Natural Element handles design. Clients collaborate through a Virtual Design Center, where you work alongside the drafting and design team to shape the plan. As it comes together, you can view a 3D model of the home and take a virtual tour of the rooms before a single log is cut.

That matters more than it might sound. A log or timber home reads very differently from a set of flat drawings. Seeing the space in three dimensions helps you catch the things that are hard to picture on paper, like how a great room feels under exposed timber, or where the winter light lands. If you have ever wrestled with a floor plan on paper, our post on how to choose a floor plan covers some of the same ground.

Materials and craftsmanship

Natural Element builds with premium natural materials and traditional joinery, the kind of joinery that lets heavy timber carry a roof the way it has for centuries. The timber species vary by design and by what suits the home. Depending on the project, that can include:

• Douglas Fir, a strong, stable choice for structural timbers
• White Pine, a classic look for log walls
• Oak, dense and hard-wearing
• Cypress, valued for its natural resistance to moisture
• Western Red Cedar, light and rot-resistant
• Southern Yellow Pine, strong and widely used in framing

Good material is only half of it. A timber home lives or dies on the details, and joinery, flashing, and how the wood meets the weather all matter here. Minnesota puts real stress on a building through frost heave, deep cold, and the swing from January to July. The value of getting those details right is the sort of thing we get into in our post on timber frame homes as an investment.

What this means for south metro clients

Here is the simple version. Natural Element brings the design and the materials. LBI is your local builder. We handle the site, the permits, and the construction, and we do it with the same crew and the same standards we bring to every home in Shakopee, Savage, Lakeville, and the towns around them.

You get national design experience without shipping the whole job out of state, and you get a builder you can drive out and meet. If a custom log or timber home has been on your mind, tell us what you are picturing and we will walk you through how the partnership works and what a build looks like on your property.