Traditionally, members of the land owning aristocracy established and maintained their status by giving feasts to the entire village community, and thus earned the right to carve elaborate decorations on the facade and interior wood columns of their homes. While many feasts were part of the normal social obligations entailed in marriages and other rites, some feasts served only to enhance the prestige of the giver's family. While the majority of Nuristani were part of the land owning farming or herding class, each village had at least one family of bari, craftsmen who performed the labor of building houses and making tools, furnishings and household utensils. The bari who executed the elaborate wood carvings on the aristocrats' houses were not permitted to carve the wooden elements of their own dwellings. Zoom Shutter panels forming part of verandah complex, Nuristan, Afghanistan.
Houses are of post and beam construction.
The spaces between the timber framework are filled with small stones, and a clay-plaster coating is applied to the area of the stone only, leaving the timbers exposed. Only the solid wooden upper facade, and the interior columns of a home are carved. This facade is made up of wooden beams, sills, window posts and a variety of panels fitted between the supporting members. A typical facade may be twenty to thirty feet in length, and every section of the facade of a landowner's home may be elaborately carved. Wood for house construction was hewn in the coniferous forests of the mountains adjoining the villages.