What is a house for? Sure, the walls block the wind and the rooms give us privacy. But besides the practicalities of a roof over our head and a floor under our feet, what does a home do for us? According to timber framer Jim Cranston, a well-designed house has the power to make us feel safe on a deep level. As summer turned to fall, Cranston shared some thoughts on the profundity of coziness.

“We have a psychology that’s connected to many generations of people and what they were looking for,” Cranston said. “Let’s go back to, say, some indigenous tribe somewhere, you know? What’s the safest place from your enemies?” 

The answer, he said, is a cave.

“Basically, it has one entrance, it’s got a source of fire, you’re out of the elements.” It’s that simple. “Create a space where people feel comfortable. They’re safe.”

Cranston isn’t building caves, per se, but the timber frame houses and barns he has built on the Island over the years with his company Offshore Timber do share some important properties with those ancient dwellings. For one, they’re both made of natural materials. Cranston uses oak, Douglas fir, cedar, and cherry sourced from American and Canadian mills. Instead of sprawling, bright-white mansions, a Cranston home prioritizes warm tones, some lower ceilings, and manageable sizes. He often builds without metal joinery. (If building codes require such new-fangled things as metal brackets, he takes great pains to make sure they aren’t visible.) He loves a wood-burning fireplace.

Cranston began his timber-framing business in New Hampshire in 1987. In the ’90s, a general contractor named Fred Wasserloos asked him if he was open to taking on a project on Martha’s Vineyard. At first, Cranston was apprehensive about putting a tractor-trailer on the ferry. “But, you know, it turns out it happens every day,” he said. That first project led to another and then another and, eventually, Cranston was living and working on the Island full-time. He realized he needed his own house.

So, he bought some property in West Tisbury. “I stood there on the land, and I’m like, ‘Well, how are we gonna make this work?’ I didn’t want to screw the land up.” 

First, he thought small. He decided to begin with an 800-square-foot guest house – he’d build the main house after. Cranston toured an affordable housing development and saw how they were constructing homes that could keep utility bills at $125 per month and planned to implement similar techniques. He saw pictures of a timber-framed Japanese temple and contacted the designer for permission to use some elements of that design in his house. And, in all things, he sought cohesion. 

“You can go on jobs, and it’s like, ‘Well, why does that section of the house look different than this section of the house?’ Because there were two or three crews involved,” he said. “It’s got to look like one hand built this thing.”

He built his guest house with warmth and tradition in mind. This can be seen in the warm-toned plaster walls inside and the rafter tails along the roofline outside. When it was done, he realized he didn’t need more space. The guest house became the main house. When the first utility bill came, the total was $125. 

Cranston, newly divorced and raising his two sons, also built a tent-like structure that was used as a kind of clubhouse for his boys and their friends. The impact of the space has continued. “I still have kids coming up to me that say, ‘Man, I remember walking into that building,’ just going, ‘I feel so comfortable and safe.’ And these were ten-, eleven-year-old boys who just go, ‘Why do I feel so good in here?’” 

The answer, of course, was in the work. “I think it’s in the designs that we do,” Cranston said. “You’ve got to think about the psychology of it, and what people really need to feel comfortable in the world.”

A few years ago, Cranston sold that house in West Tisbury and has been living in the woods in New Hampshire. He’s closed up the Offshore Timber business but still builds houses and barns on the Island under his own name. He doesn’t have a website, and he doesn’t advertise because he doesn’t need to. When people walk into his homes, they just get it.