Projects · Flathead Valley, MT

The Shire

A 12,000 square foot, three-story residence carrying a timber package of close to two million dollars — one of the largest we've framed. The build includes reclaimed timber throughout, vaulted ceilings, a basement bowling alley, and a roughly 1,000 square foot elevated theater room.

Looking up inside the frame at a massive weathered reclaimed beam spanning overhead, carried on angled braces, with open blue sky between the timbers and a chainsaw left on the plywood floor below.

12,000sq ft: Size
7months: Timeline
5men: Crew
~$2M: Timber package

Twelve thousand square feet across three stories, and just under two million dollars of timber in it before a single stick was set. That number is the wood arriving on site — not the build, not the labor, just the package. Reclaimed timbers run throughout the interior, paired with vaulted ceilings and walls tall enough to make the whole house feel oversized from the inside out.

A house at this scale is a logistics problem as much as a framing one. The beams span distances that put them outside anything a yard carries off the shelf, so every one of them is custom, and every one has to arrive in the right order for the crew to keep moving. Five men worked it for seven months.

Beyond the frame itself, the house carries some features you don’t see on most jobs — a bowling alley in the basement, and an elevated theater room of about 1,000 square feet. The homeowners didn’t hold back on any part of it. It’s one of the largest and most distinctive houses we’ve put together.

More photos

A framer stands on the wall plate two stories up, small against the height of the building, with a ladder reaching to him and snow over the ground below.

Looking out over the framed level from up on the roof structure, trusses crossing the foreground and a worker moving between the walls below, with a second sheathed building standing off among the trees.

The whole house seen from above at dusk, roof rafters still open over the center section, dark forest closing in around it and mountains low on the horizon.

The house from above in warm evening light, rafters fanned out across the main roof, with block piers standing in the bare gravel courtyard below.

Standing among the timber posts — heavy weathered uprights and diagonal braces carrying the floor above, sunlight falling in strips across the plywood between them.

Seen from up on the framing, looking down at floor joists laid in rows across the concrete foundation walls, snow over everything, a gloved hand holding a nail gun at the edge of the picture.

Three framers at work down inside the concrete foundation in winter, putting up interior walls, with low sun flaring through bare trees behind them.