Projects · The Homestead, Whitefish, MT

Morton's

A 6,800 square foot house framed through a Montana winter, the first home Glacier Basin Builders has built in the Homesteads north of Whitefish, with timber accents and vaulted ceilings throughout.

The finished house seen from above through the trees, dark siding and timber posts beneath a shingled roof, with the valley opening out to far mountains beyond.

Sixty-eight hundred square feet, up at the Homestead, framed through the winter. This was the first house we’ve been able to build in the Homesteads north of Whitefish — not a complex project on paper, but a good-looking one, with timber accents and vaulted ceilings that carry the house.

Winter builds in this valley are their own category of hard. The days are short, the cold is real, and nothing about the work gets easier because the calendar says you’re behind. This one kicked our butts. It also turned out phenomenal, which is generally how those two things go together.

Challenges

Framing through a Flathead winter — short days, cold, and weather that dictates the schedule whether you like it or not.

More photos

The finished house from the air through a screen of larches, dark siding and a shingled roof stepping down the slope, tarps still weighted over one ridge and the valley hazy beyond.

Snow falling across the site, the sheathed house standing behind a crew working beside a trailer, with a lift and a loader parked in the churned snow.

Two of the crew standing below an opening spanned by a heavy timber beam, the gable framing bright against a hard blue winter sky.

A telehandler lifting a sheathing panel up to the wall, with a ground heater trailer parked alongside it on the frozen gravel.

The whole house in frame across a wide winter view — sheathed walls and open gable ends standing on snow-covered ground, an excavator parked at the left and snow-capped mountains along the horizon.