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Projects · Lion Mountain, MT

Lion Mountain Rivendell

Custom framing build for a homeowner on Lion Mountain, roughly 9,000 square feet.

The corner of the house in heavy fog, a tall stack of windows running the full height to the eave, snow sitting on the deep timber overhangs and along the stone base below.

This job was a custom build up on Lion Mountain, coming in at about 9,000 square feet. It’s one of the bigger projects we’ve taken on, and the terrain made it a real test — the hillside was steep enough that equipment got stuck more than once over the course of the build.

We started construction in late spring, which brought its own set of weather-related complications to work around as the project moved forward. Despite the site challenges, the crew got it built and it was a project we enjoyed from start to finish given its scale and the site conditions we had to work through.

Challenges

The site sat on a very steep hillside, which caused equipment to get stuck at points during the build. Starting in late spring also meant weather elements factored into the schedule throughout construction.

More photos

The house seen from the churned-up drive, its roof loaded with snow and the walls still in housewrap above a new stone base, tire ruts cut through mud and slush in the foreground.A smaller wing straight on, carrying a thick unbroken cap of snow on its roof, two windows set into the housewrap and a trench cut through the snow in front of it.The garage end with three open bays under a deep timber eave, snow lying along the roofline, and a boom lift parked back at the far left.An inside corner where two gable ends meet, timber eaves crossing overhead, and a wire cage full of broken stone sitting in the snow at the foot of the wall.A tall gable end rising into fog thick enough that the trees behind it barely register, windows scattered across the housewrap, snow along the timber eave.A corner where the wall steps out into an angled bay, windows stacked through two floors, snow sitting on the timber eaves and on a pair of clay pots below.The main elevation straight on — nine tall windows stacked three by three up into the gable, a smaller gable to either side, and deep unbroken snow across the whole foreground.The entry, double doors set between windows with wings running off to either side, and stacks of lumber buried under snow in the foreground.Deep untouched snow running right up to the house, the walls stepping back in stages behind it, a bare concrete post standing alone in the drift.A long low gable end with only two windows in it, an electrical panel mounted at the near corner, traffic cones and caution tape half-buried in snow.Inside, the roof trusses still open overhead, bundles of pipe lying on the bare floor, and snow-covered trees filling every window.The great room from within — the ceiling climbing away into open rafters, and a nine-pane window wall filling the gable end with nothing but snow and trees.A tall open volume with a walkway framed across it at the upper level, a block chimney rising the full height on the right, and a mitre saw set up on the floor far below.A smaller room under a vaulted truss ceiling, windows on two walls looking straight out into deep snow, a red fuel can left on the floor.A tall wall section standing braced against a blue summer sky, still strapped where it was lifted, with a framer working at its base and a lift boom reaching in from the right.A framed gable standing open to the view, the whole window wall still just a grid of studs with forested mountains showing straight through it.Looking down over the whole build from above, framed walls laid out around a bare concrete slab, the forested hillside dropping away behind, a red truck parked at the edge of the cut.A telehandler reaching in over the top of the wall with a section swinging from its forks, the frame standing open to a hard blue sky.