This handcrafted log house in Colorado is the thing dreams are made. The stunning log cabin came to be when the owners who took family ski trips twice a year in Colorado, decided they wanted to relocate to Colorado permanently. They drove around the state until they found the perfect 40-acre parcel of land is centrally located in Pitkin County. Although the owners knew their Colorado move was still years away, they returned to Florida and began to make their log house plans. One day, they were standing in line at the grocery store and saw a log home on the cover of a log-home magazine, with the log house catching owner Beth’s eye. The cabin building was just what they were looking for, that log home was from Montana Log Homes, which produces logs that come from standing-dead lodgepole pine. The logs are skip-peeled to remove the bark but still leave the inner cambium layer. When the time came to begin their log house project, owners Lanny and Beth traveled to Kalispell, Montana, to work out the log house details for their new log home.
The owners found a log house floor plan that worked and made several modifications, some of which were required to meet the Pitkin County’s building code. Their starting point was having the log house living room, dining room and kitchen in one open great room. The kitchen has an island that is finished with stones just like the ones used for the stunning fireplace. They planned for the log house great room to have cathedral ceilings and a fireplace. Because of the house size restrictions in Pitkin County, they turned the open porch off the kitchen into a sunroom, which does not count in the overall square footage.
The great room for this log house is on the second level, with the walkout on the first level accessible from the two-car attached garage and the two sets of French doors that are under the cover of the second-level outdoor deck. The owners have boys that were teenagers, so they wanted the log house bedrooms and recreational area to be separate from the parents. So this log house was designed with a family game room, two bedrooms, a mini kitchen, two full baths and a laundry room on the lower level which are considered the domain of their sons. There are two additional bedrooms at opposite ends of a long hallway, with a television room, and a bathroom that is on the third level.
The family chose Gabe Butler, owner of Montana Log Homes of Colorado, as their log house contractor. It was this crew that had built the log home that was featured on the cover of the log house magazine that inspired the owners. They told Butler that they were interested in the same log house exterior, which ikncluded the three-story bay-window wing that was finished with gingerbread shingles. They also wanted the same hardware that was used for the hammerbeam trusses in the great room, which required that they contract with a steel fabricator to have those custom made.
