Valley Vistas

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GALLATIN
Valley Vistas
A dramatic wall of Point Five windows affords
panoramic views of the Gallatin Valley and
mountain ranges beyond. A painting by William
Matthews graces the wood-burning fireplace.

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Tradition Meets
CONTEMPORARY LUXURY
IN A MULTIWINGED
MOUNTAINTOP RANCH HOUSE.
BY MARGARET A. HAAPOJA
PHOTOS BY ROGER WADE • STYLING BY DEBRA GRAHL

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RIGHT: Will says this
picture captures the
spirit of the house,
the big central living
area where people in
any of the rooms can
talk to one another.
Amarriage of Old World “chinker”-style log construction
and natural stone, the sprawling ranch
house hunkers down into the hilltop. Every room
offers a spectacular vista of the Gallatin Valley below and
the Bridger Mountains, the Spanish Peaks, and the Madison
Range in the distance. This is Montana, Big Sky country,
and the Lansings love it here. For 15 years the couple
traveled through the Rockies searching for the perfect place
for their second home. “We just fell in love with Montana
and the wide open spaces,” says Will. “We chose Bozeman
because it’s a college town. We wanted a place that
was beautiful like A River Runs Through It, and yet accessible
by air.”
Their 3,500-acre ranch is within an hour of the airport,
yet it’s secluded enough to provide a peaceful refuge for the
couple and their three young children. Megyn loves to
leave the bedroom windows open on summer nights so
she can listen to the night sounds and hear the wind. Will
had always dreamed of a log home, and Megyn says she
followed his dream. “He’s the visionary, and he’s always
got good ideas,” she says. “In the West you see a lot of old
log homesteads, so I had an idea of the way the house
should look. This is sort of tradition meets luxury. It
reminds me of the way Montana should be, and it fits into
its surroundings.”
The 10,500-square-foot home blends massive chinked
logs and saddle-notched corners with lots of stonework
inside and out. “We wanted the house to look somewhat
traditional, but we wanted it to have modern conveniences
as well,” says Will. “For example, we have large windows
that let in tons of light. That’s not very traditional, but we
wanted big windows for the big vistas. From a materials
standpoint, we stuck with stone and reclaimed fir and
other traditional materials to give it that kind of a feel.”
The floors are crafted of 100-year-old fir milled from old
railroad trestle timbers. All the cabinets were custom made
from the reclaimed fir by Richard Garwood, owner of
Mountain High Woodworks in Bozeman.
Before they began, the couple read every log home magazine
and coffee table book they could get their hands on.
They clipped out pictures of features and styles they liked
and brought a full folder to the first meeting with their architect.
Will emphasized the importance of spending plenty of
time in the planning and design phase because afterward it’s
too late. “I mean that in terms of concentrating really hard
on how you use space,” he says. “It seems kind of crazy in
a 10,500-square-foot home, but I was very focused on using
every space well so we don’t have any wasted spaces. We
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ABOVE: Extended
eave overhangs help
block the sun in the
summer and allow
the warmth in during
the winter. The
double “cold roof”
system alleviates
the potential for ice
damage from snow
melt.
95

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96

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spent a lot of time talking about exactly what kinds of spaces
we wanted in the house, and then we built the house around
the way we live.”
Locati Architects of Bozeman designed the Lansings’
dream home. Jerry Locati’s company specializes in custom
alpine residential architecture, and they do a couple of
handcrafted log homes every year as well as many with
log accents. Nellis Custom Logworks of Bozeman supplied
the log package for the Lansing home. Made up of spruce,
hemlock, and Douglas fir, the huge logs were all handselected
in Oregon and Washington. A team draw-knifed
the logs for a rustic look.
“The site most definitely affected the design,” says project
architect Kyle Tage. “It’s on a knoll that overlooks the
Gallatin Valley, so the house has a 45-degree turn that
allows it to wrap into the hill and overlook the entire valley
from east to west. The other design criterion we struggled
to achieve is that the house is at the top of the knob
yet we didn’t want it to dominate the skyline, so we buried
the lower level into the ground as much as possible and
focused our architectural detailing to accent the low horizontal
lines of the house.”
Schlauch-Bottcher Construction Company built the Lansing
home, and partner Jamie Bottcher says he thoroughly
enjoyed the two-year project. He admits his crew had to
resort to using a 9,000-pound all-terrain forklift to haul the
heavy loads of logs up the last stretch of steep grade into the
site, but that’s not unusual in the mountainous terrain they’re
accustomed to. “We’re pretty used to dealing with remote
locations,” Bottcher says. “It just takes a little bit more organization
and a little more planning.”
“Building a home from a distance isn’t difficult with
today’s technology,” says Will, whose primary residence is
in the San Francisco Bay area. Either the architect or the
builder sent him 20 to 30 digital photos each week so he
could see the progress on different parts of the project, and
he visited the site once a month. “I recommend that system
for anyone doing long distance construction,” Will
says. “I’d review the digital shots every week, and within
24 hours they’d get feedback from me.”
The most challenging part of the project for Jamie
Bottcher and his crew was allowing for settling in
such a large house with several wings. “It was a
little bit of a head-scratcher accommodating for the settling
in that size of a structure,” he says. “It’s just such a
massive, sprawling house as far as the footprint is concerned.
It took a little longer to sort out the details. Everything
needs to settle at the same rate. The half of the house
that was being stacked would settle naturally; and the
other half, being composed of posts and glass, would have
to be manually settled. The challenging portion was the
connection between the two to keep all the structural
integrity together.”
“When you build a log house, you’re basically building
a machine that accommodates the movement,” says Will.
“With a cabin that’s shaped like a box, it’s no big deal. But
with a house that’s big and shaped like ours with multiple
wings, it’s another story.”
There were several features the couple wanted to incorporate
into their home. “We wanted a large central fireplace
that would serve as the backbone of the home,” says
Will, “so we borrowed that theme from Old Faithful Inn
and our fireplace serves the kitchen and eating area.” There
are five other fireplaces in the house including a doublesided
one that opens to an outside patio. “Knowing our
seasons are short, we’ve got to do everything we can to
allow our clientele to utilize the home to the fullest,” says
Tage. “The outdoor fireplace extends their enjoyment into
the evening.” Bottcher says the large outdoor living spaces
surrounding the Lansing home are becoming more and
more common in the Bozeman area.
Both Will and Megyn wanted a large, open central living
area comprised of the kitchen, dining area, and living
room. “We tend to eat and cook together,” says Will, “so
we wanted a space where people could be preparing food
in the kitchen and others could be at the table keeping
them company, so we built a large space that handles both
as opposed to a separate formal dining room.”
Another priority was separating the children’s area from
the adults’ part of the home. The lower level includes boys’
and girls’ bunkrooms with six berths in each. It also contains
a large game room, a home theater, and an exercise room.
Because of the home’s remote location, Lansing contracted
with Intelegard, a Colorado company, to install a fire
Continued on page 154
ABOVE: Large outdoor
living areas surround
the home, allowing the
family to enjoy the
spectacular mountain
views from all sides.
Jamie Bottcher built
this custom picnic
table which seats eight
comfortably.
OPPOSITE: The family
room side of the
home’s central fireplace,
one of six in the
home built of Montana
Chief Cliff stone by
Scott Koelzer Masonry,
houses a wet bar.
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BK Cypress Log Homes 47, 125 39
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Pan Abode Cedar Homes 29 11
Perma Chink Systems, Inc. 39
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Precision Craft Log Structures 9, 104-105 07
Real Log Homes 22-23 05
Rocky Mountain Log Homes 153
Satterwhite Log Homes 51 09
Specialty Woodworks Co. 52 28
StoneMill Log Homes 41, 113 33
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Timberpeg 17
Town & Country Cedar Homes 25 29
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Wilderness Company C2, 116 110
Wisconsin Log Homes 27, 115
Yankee Barn Homes 20, 129 52
154
VALLEY VISTA
Continued from page 97
suppression system. Bottcher believes it is an
excellent idea since a forest fire came within two
miles of the site during construction. “In event
of a fire, you attach hoses to hydrants around
your house to spray and completely cover the
house with fire-retardant foam,” says Lansing,
who highly recommends the system and the
company.
One of Will’s favorite features is the housewide
sound system installed by Avitel of Bozeman.
“In addition to doing the home theater,
they wired the entire house for music,” he
says, “so we have music in all the main rooms
as well as on the porches and decks. We have
music going most of the time, and it’s seamless
from room to room.” Vantage lighting, a flexible
system that gives them a lot of control,
allows the Lansings to press one button to
turn all the lights on or off. “You have to
decide if you want that kind of complexity in
your lighting system,” says Will, who has
mixed feelings about it.
Locati Interiors helped the Lansings decorate
the home, but the couple had a great deal
of input into the process. “I like neutrals with
splashes of color here and there,” says Megyn.
“It’s a very soothing, calm place, and that’s
what I wanted. I also wanted comfort and
durability. Hence the leather furniture for
dogs, kids, mud, and snow.” They chose art
that would have an impact. Paintings by contemporary
western artist William Matthews
and Wisconsin artist Jeff Larson blend well
with the furnishings, which are an eclectic mix
of everything from antiques to traditional.
“We shipped antiques from all over the country
during the two years the house was being
built,” says Will. “Whenever we saw things
we liked we’d buy them and have them sent to
a warehouse in Bozeman. That way, when the
house was finished, it was furnished in a
weekend, and we moved in.”
The Lansings escape to their Montana
retreat as often as their children’s school vacations
allow. Often friends and relatives join
them for holidays, family reunions, even a
wedding. They hope to own the ranch forever.
“I would say it’s probably going to belong to
our children someday,” says Will.
ARCHITECT: Locati Architects, Bozeman, Montana;
BUILDER: Schlauch-Bottcher Construction Co.,
Bozeman, Montana.
ROCKIES RETREAT
Continued from page 103
In the adjoining great room, brown leather
sofas set on a patterned area rug invite reading,
conversation, or just plain relaxing, as vacation
homes should. The environmentally friendly
natural gas fireplace, with its handy hearth seat,
adds its own glow to the warm ambience. Full
central heating comes via a radiant in-floor system
fueled by a gas furnace in the basement. As
for summer cooling, as Richard says, “We’re at
an elevation of 9,750 feet—no need for air-conditioning.”
In the open kitchen, there’s a dramatic
play of materials: knotty alder cabinets,
light-toned granite countertops, and offwhite
tiles of tumbled marble above the
counters. Over the range, a large medallion
presents an eye-catching accent, perfectly
framed by the curved cupboard above it. As
elsewhere in the house, lighting fixtures were
selected for softness and style as well as
optimal illumination. Woven-back bar
stools, complete with curved arm rests, stand
ready at the snack counter.
The great outdoors, with all its sports possibilities,
is a continuing attraction. “The first
time we came here was the summer,” says
Valerie. Hiking and biking are high on the list,
with fly-fishing close behind. “In addition to
summer, the girls have two weeks’ vacation in
December and March. We are all avid skiers
and find it’s a great way to spend quality time
together. There are plenty of runs here for all
skills.” Snowboarding has also joined the roster
of outdoor challenges.
Even at home, the landscape is a constant
presence. A wide semicircular deck outside the
great room affords a panoramic view of
mountain peaks. Another patio is accessed
through sliding doors from the guest bedroom
and dining area. Richard has added some colorful
touches to the aspen and evergreen setting
by planting native flowers and grass.
The home’s considerable charm (“due to
Valerie’s hard work,” Richard says) makes it
a place everyone wants to enjoy as often as
possible. And in its unsurpassed mountain setting,
nature adds all the rest and recreation
needed for an ideal vacation house.
LOG HOME PRODUCER: Town & Country Cedar
Homes, Petoskey, Michigan; BUILDER: Anderson
Log Homes, Telluride, Colorado; DESIGNER: Dan
Houlihan, Fountainhead Studio, Telluride, Colorado.