Away From it All

Timber Homes Illustrated, 2003 Annual Buyers Guide
Written by Colleen Morrissey | Photography by Roger Wade
A Colorado couple builds the perfect mountain home

Sitting at an elevation of 8,700 feet, the home enjoys a bird's eye view of the countryside from the home's deck, which surrounds the home on three sides. To help the home blend in more naturally with its heavily wooded hilltop site, the owner's chose a green metal roof, hunter green trim around the windows and a light brown colored stucco for their walls. The great room faces a prow front, which is a building structure named for the prow on the front of a boat. Prow fronts are usually filled from floor to ceiling with windows that highlight the view outside. In this case, it's the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The master bedroom is located under one part of the steeply pitched roof. The roof, which was topped with energy-efficient Insulspan structural insulated panels, has its pine tongue and groove decking applied to the panels before they were installed. The 748-square foot second story functions primarily as a huge master bedroom suite complete with the loft comfortably fitted with mission style furnishings. The loft, which juts out over the great room below, sits just outside the door to the master bedroom. It provides a private retreat for the couple when out-of-town guests visit.

When Ruth Steele and Dan Epperson were considering where to retire, they naturally thought of Colorado's Wet Mountain Valley. For years the Denver couple had been day tripping to the region's picturesque Crystal and Wet Mountains, located three hours away. "We did a lot of backpacking and hiking in those mountains," Ruth says.
They decided to purchase a small cabin in the woods to make longer, weekend trips possible. Having a place to stay would give them more time to enjoy the outdoors and share the natural beauty with family and friends. They looked at several places before finding one that had possibilities. "We decided, though, that we liked the location, but not the cabin," Ruth says.
Directly across from the cabin, they noticed a plot of land for sale. After mulling it over, the couple decided to take the plunge, buy the property and build their retirement home there. They bought 11.3 acres.

"The area is beautiful," Ruth says. "We are actually on Wet Mountain at about 8,700 feet. The valley is actually pretty remote with few people in it. That's what we like so much about it."
The property is rocky and heavily wooded with Ponderosa pine, but they found the perfect spot on which to site the home: A ridge overlooking the valley and across to the Sang re de Crisco Mountains to the west. "Their view is of a purple wall of mountains reaching 14,000 feet plus," says Judd Dickey, the couple's architect and owner of Mountain Timber Designs, Inc. in Golden, Colorado.

The couple thought the best type of retirement home to fit in with the surrounding countryside would be something rustic. "We considered different types of building systems," Dan says, indicating that their first thoughts were for a cedar or log home.
Seeing there was a log and timber-frame home show coming to Denver, they decided to check out some companies. After seeing a demonstration of someone carving joinery at the show, however, the couple fell in love with timber-framing. They also met Judd Dickey, who at the time represented Riverbend Timber Framing.

After leaving the show, the couple did more research on timber framing in general and the types of frames that Riverbend designs and builds. They looked at Riverbend homes in various magazines, and Judd set up some visits to several Riverbend homes in the vicinity.
"We decided that timber framing was what we wanted," Dan says. Ruth adds, "We just fell in love and knew that we had found our timber-frame company."

The couple was particularly impressed by Riverbend's insulating system. In fact, Riverbend owns its own panel company called Insulspan, which makes foam-core insulated roof and wall panels for timber-frame homes.

Next, the couple turned to a design for their home. Working with Judd, they came up with a plan they liked, then Judd built a model of the frame out of Balsa wood. "That was very helpful," Ruth says, "because we could imagine ourselves in it."

While Riverbend and its crew would raise the frame and enclose it in panels, the couple planned on finishing the home themselves. "We essentially bought a shell and planned to do everything inside," Ruth says.

The couple also put together a wish list for the home's design: a steep roof pitch, a prow in the front, and a strong connection (in the form of doors and windows) to the outside. "There are doors to the outside in every room except the bathroom," Ruth says. "And all the windows frame a view on all sides of the house."

Ruth and Dan also wanted the main level to contain all the functions similar to a live-in ranch home, including a small bedroom which could also serve as an all-purpose room. And they wanted the home to be very low maintenance, with a metal roof and stucco siding. "These materials also add greatly to the fire resistance in a very dry climate," Judd points out.
For economy and efficiency, they decided on a two-bay home with no trusses inside. "We modified pitches and added dormers to a Riverbend frame design to accommodate a larger loft space where we put the bedroom and bath," Judd says. "This made for a cozy attic-like bedroom with lots of oak timbers."

The only problem the couple encountered when finalizing their design were the height restrictions in the country where they planned to build. "Ruth and Dan wanted a prow type of design and a chalet look," Judd says, "but there were very restrictive height limitations." Designing a prow front, which is known for its towering heights, with these limitations would be a challenge for Judd to design. He visited the site to get a better understanding of the couple's sloped property. He was able to give the couple what they wanted by fiddling with the slope of the roof. "I used a 10/12 roof pitch in stead of a 12/12 usually found on prow fronts," he says. "This not only softened the look a bit, but also brought the top of the roof down."
To further soften the look of the roof, Judd designed the porch roofs to flow together on the entry side. "It makes a sharper looking house more gentle," he says.

"The country does have a fairly complex formula for relating to the slope of the land," Ruth says. "Our general contractor and Judd both worked it out so that we would be in compliance. In fact, we are exactly in compliance, within the limit."

Judd and a representative from Riverbend worked with contractor John Comerford of Custom Homes, Inc. to raise the frame and install the panels, and afterward put on the roof and stucco siding."

At the point that the frame was in place, I had this feeling that I didn't want the panels put on because the frame looked so beautiful," Ruth says. "But that wouldn't have been practical."
Once the frame was raised, contractors came in to do the rough-ins for the home's heating, cooling and ventilation systems. Since Ruth and Dan hadn't retired yet, they started coming down from Denver on weekends to work on the home and supervise the work being done. Several months later, when they did retire, "we essentially moved in, even though it was a shell," Ruth says. "We did all the work from that point on."

Doing all the tiling, hardwood floors, cabinets and countertops, the couple took nearly a year to complete the house. "This was after we retired," Dan says, "and yet it was like having a full time job."

While doing it themselves was exhausting, the home they helped build beautifully reflects its mountainous perch. Two levels of the 3,220-square-foot home are timber framed. The oak frame, constructed from a mixture of red and white unseasoned oak, fills the home's rooms with the warmth of wood.

One last-minute change the couple made paid off handsomely. "We originally had ordered the frame to have straight knee braces," Ruth recalls. "Which we changed because we found we wanted the curved-shaped ones. We're really glad we got the curved knee braces because now our home is a lot more elegant looking."