Big Sky Cabin Remodel

The structural work came first. Our engineering partner assessed every load-bearing wall and developed a steel-and-timber solution that allowed us to remove three interior walls on the main floor without compromising the roofline. The key move — the one that transformed the entire character of the home — was opening the ceiling above the great room to expose the original timber ridge beam and rafters. These had been hidden above a dropped ceiling for forty years. Once sanded, treated, and lit with recessed uplighting, they became the architectural signature of the house.

With the walls gone and the ceiling vaulted, the main floor became a single flowing space: kitchen, dining, and living area united under a 16-foot peak. We replaced every window on the south and west walls with triple-pane, low-E units sized to capture Lone Mountain and the Spanish Peaks. The effect is less "mountain cabin" and more "mountain pavilion" — the landscape is present in every room, every moment.

The kitchen was designed as the centerpiece of the open plan. A 12-foot island in honed soapstone provides prep, dining, and gathering space. The cabinets are flat-panel rift white oak with integrated pulls — a deliberate departure from the traditional raised-panel style that dominates Big Sky's older homes. Matte black fixtures and a concrete-finish range hood ground the space without competing with the timber above.

The two bathrooms received complete gut renovations. The master bath mirrors the design vocabulary of our Riverside project — heated floors, frameless glass, natural stone — but at a scale appropriate to a primary residence rather than a weekend retreat. The guest bath is more restrained: subway tile, a custom walnut vanity, and a skylight that floods the space with light even in December.

Behind the visible finishes, we replaced every system in the house. A ducted heat-pump system provides heating and cooling with a fraction of the energy the old baseboards consumed. The electrical panel was upgraded from 100 to 200 amps, with dedicated circuits for a future EV charger and the induction range. All plumbing was replaced with PEX, and the exterior walls received closed-cell spray foam insulation that brought the envelope from an estimated R-11 to R-38.

The material palette honors the cabin's heritage without imitating it. Reclaimed Douglas fir from a decommissioned Montana grain elevator was milled into accent walls and floating shelves. The new wide-plank engineered hardwood — a smoked French oak — replaced the carpet throughout and visually warms the open-plan space. Where the original cabin had knotty pine in every direction, the new design uses reclaimed wood as punctuation rather than wallpaper.