For over 25 years Harmony Exchange has been a leading provider of innovative timber frame systems. Combining artisan craftsmanship with the industry’s most advanced technology, we create some of North America’s most widely recognized private residential and commercial timber frames.

Once the project is underway, our team will produce 3-dimensional concept drawings, timber frame shop drawings and finalized plans. In addition, we will develop material specifications and engineer-sealed documents that will ensure the efficient manufacturing and installation of your system for your specific geographic locale.

From design to installation, our project management process provides these important benefits:

• Streamlined coordination and communication
• Specific timelines via Gantt Charts
• On-time delivery with reduced lead-times
• Seamless integration and adaptability of timber framing to your building system

In addition to the timber frame structure, Harmony Exchange can also provide related timber frame products such as structural insulated panels, decking, interior finishes, exterior siding and Pella windows and doors.

Harmony Exchange is proud to have provided timber frame systems for these and other fine residential and commercial projects:

• HGTV Dream Home 2006, Grey Rock, Lake Lure, NC
• Southern Accents Home of the Year, The Preserve at Little Pines, Marshall, NC
• Guest Lodge, Sunalei Preserve, Boone, NC
• Jamestown Settlement Exhibition Hall, Jamestown, VA
• Ritz Carlton Hotel Pool Enclosure, Greensboro, GA
• Wesley United Methodist Church, St. Simons Island, GA
• St. John’s Lutheran Church, Conover, NC
• Canterbury School Gymnasium, Greensboro, NC

We work directly with Builders to aid them with installation and finishing of our Timber Frame, log and wall systems.

Be a part of our Timber Frame Builder's Network.

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A Builder Talks About Harmony Exchange

July 1, 2004 | kittimurray@juno.com

A Builder Talks About Harmony Exchange

If Only I Had Known

I recently found myself thinking, "If only I knew then what I know now." Not an uncommon sentiment for a middle-aged woman. I was remembering a home my husband and I bought in small town Pennsylvania in 1988. We were smitten with this big, oafish chunk of a hundred-year-old house and we were convinced we had watched enough episodes of "This Old House" to tackle its fragile horsehair plaster walls, its antiquated bathrooms, and its layers upon layers of crooked kitchen flooring. If ever a house were to prove Murphy's Law, this one did. Remember the Lucy and Ethel wallpaper scene? Or any Laurel and Hardy picture? That was my husband and I tackling our stubbornly uncooperative abode. What a disaster!

What I know now that I didn't know then is that it pays to get the best people and that the best people will then use the best materials. I wish I had known Jon Berndsen back then. I interviewed him on the phone recently and it quickly became clear that he would have done our big ole house proud. He would have taken the grandiose ideas floating around in our heads and made them actually work.

Jon's company Berndsen Custom Homes has pursued the tasks of remodeling, historic renovation, and building custom new homes in the Atlanta area for more than a decade with an unparalleled passion. Berndsen Custom Homes has been trusted to restore some of the grandest homes in Atlanta. I talked with Jon in order to ask him specifically about his use of Harmony Exchange products and services. It didn't take long for two common threads to emerge in our conversation.

Passionate About the Job

First, Jon loves what he does. Ask a scrap of a question about renovation and he begins to rhapsodize about one of his projects, each one clearly near and dear to his heart. I could just see the 1927 home designed by Phillip Shutze (Atlantans will recognize him as the architect of our own Swan House). I could imagine the 1942 kitchen and bathrooms and immediately conjured up a picture of the elderly, genteel matron who must have owned it and kept it locked somewhere between the 20's and the 40's until the new owner called Jon for help. And then there's the palatial Greek Revival home complete with columns and marble, traditional throughout, until one descends into the 4000 square foot basement and is transported to a mountain lodge. Hand-hewn timbers in the living area and log cabin walls in the boy's bedrooms created just the look the owners wanted. They had been lost in the mountains on vacation and stayed in a lodge. With their photos and Jon's help, they recreated the look and feel of their retreat.

As Jon described home after exquisite home, I found myself thinking, "He reminds me of Brian Mueller at Harmony Exchange." Neither man have I met in any way other than phone conferences, but their infectious love of the work they do jumps through the phone line and is amazingly similar. They both say things like, "meticulous attention to detail" and "dedication toward producing a high quality product," and they sound utterly sincere. I listened to Jon and wondered how I would steer him toward my subject: Harmony Exchange. He was fascinating to hear, but I had an agenda. I didn't need to worry.

Jon began to tell me about a Craftsman style home he is currently working on here in the Buckhead area. The owner's father had a lake house on Lake Toxaway in Cashiers, North Carolina, and she really wanted her home here to reflect the same look. Jon called on Harmony Exchange to provide the hand-peeled poplar log beams for the kitchen ceiling and the trusses and beams for other parts of the home. It wasn't until later that he learned that the Lake Toxaway home was a Harmony Exchange home as well. But he wasn't surprised at the coincidence. According to Jon, "If it's made out of wood, we use Harmony Exchange."

It's All in the Details

Here is the second thread in my conversation with Jon Berndsen; a thread woven throughout the work of Harmony Exchange as well. Details, details, details. It's all about the details. Because both men, both companies, share this ethic, it just makes sense that they would find themselves working on the same projects. As Jon explained the working relationship he has had over the years with Harmony Exchange, I could detect a strong undertone of gratitude. Here is a man who is proud of his work and obviously thankful for a service provider who enables him to do his best work. Several times he used the word "improve." Jon described approaching Harmony Exchange with a loose idea, perhaps the wild brainchild of a client, and ending up with a much-improved overall outcome. The log cabin walls (which were split logs) in the lodge-themed basement bedrooms of that Greek Revival home were an idea developed into actuality by Harmony Exchange.

One element of this dogged determination to do the details right that Jon appreciates is the CAD drawings Harmony Exchange provides with every project. Often a client cannot visualize the changes that will be made simply by looking at a 2-D drawing, but Harmony Exchange sends computer-generated, three-dimensional views that help Jon's company communicate with homeowners. According to Jon, these drawings are a part of an excellent service reputation that makes Harmony Exchange a step ahead of everyone else in the business.

I thanked Jon for spending time talking with me and hung up, only to daydream about that old house we used to own in Pennsylvania. I wondered what kind of magic Berndsen Custom Homes could wield on our big, clumsy house. I imagined hand-hewn timber beams from Harmony Exchange gracing the living room ceiling and gleaming wood trusses in the vaulted foyer. I tried to draw isometric, three-dimensional drawings in my head of the transformed front porch and Tudor style timbers set into the once nondescript turret. I shook off the daydream and walked to the end of the driveway of our 1980's spec house, picked up the newspaper and turned to the real estate section. Maybe there was an ungainly, old house for sale.

Kitti Murray
Atlanta, Georgia

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