Their dream in post-and-beam

It all started with a trip to the 1996 Philadelphia Home Show. Neil A. Morris stopped by the Lindal Cedar Homes booth, saw a photo of a post-and-beam ski chalet, and the wheels started spinning.

The company's catalog, which resembled a coffee-table book, was a wealth of inspiration, but Morris had his own ideas for creating his Ivyland, Bucks County, dream house - most of which involved the principles of modern geometry.

Morris found Chris Hughes, now the architectural and design manager for home builder David Cutler Group, and told him about features he liked - lots of curves and angles, windows, and open rooms. Plans were sent to Lindal, and company engineers made them to scale. The company shipped post and beams, Canadian red cedar, and windows and doors to the building site. Morris provided roofing.

The end result? A home Morris' fiancee, Rhonda Goldberg, calls their vacation property.

"I never want to go away," Goldberg says. "I feel like I am at a resort all the time."

The exterior features soaring angled sides and a curvy turret near the front door. Inside, guests are greeted by a large center foyer with custom butterfly staircase. A 32-foot-tall windowed great room overlooks a pool, a deck, and woods.

The idyllic 7-acre parcel was purchased in 1995 from Jack Wolford, now Morris' neighbor, who owns a circa-1700 stone house. Wolford had set a condition that whoever bought land near his house had to put a Colonial there. But Morris, who had always favored contemporary-style homes, asked Wolford about buying a secluded lot so he could build the house he wanted.

The 7,500-square-foot house, with five bedrooms and 41/2 baths, was the largest Lindal had done, says Morris, a labor lawyer with Archer and Greiner in Philadelphia. Even Wolford likes it.

The project maxed out Morris financially and proved daunting for some of the contractors. "The first drywall people came in and took one look at the place and walked out. All of the angles scared them," he says. "There was so much planning that went into this house."

Because it was so tall, Lindal worried that the house would sway. Lou Kaelin, of Kaelin Construction in Mount Holly, who served as the general contractor, had never built a house quite like it.