A View with a Room | A Spectacular Montana Timber Home

Imagine experiencing the most beautiful, relaxing wilderness of the West—a pristine cobalt-blue lake framed by stately trees and snowcapped peaks that give way to an endless azure sky. Though a bone-chilling wind blows outside, you're warm and content next to a roaring fire enjoying the scene.

You've just described a typical January day at Lazy Bay, a 4,800-square-foot timber home built by High Country Builders in northwest Montana.

Named for the serene area of Whitefish Lake where it's located, Lazy Bay is a hybrid—a construction method that combines conventional stick framing with the majesty of timbers.

Serving as designer and builder, Walt Landi, owner of High Country Builders, planned the house so that every room had views of the lake and mountains. "I put stakes in the ground to orient the house toward the view, and then drew the floorplan that way," he explains. He designed the fireplace to sit off to one side so it wouldn't interfere with the scenery. Once the plans were finalized in a computer program, a 270-degree panorama was revealed.

Success By Design
The construction schedule was aggressive, taking only seven months to build, because High Country Builders erected the home without a buyer in mind. With everything pre-selected, they were able to stay on their tight timetable. Success by Design If pressed to single out one thing that makes this home so spectacular, Walt says it would have to be the great room's windows. The expanses of fixed clear glass tucked between the naturally tapered cedar posts give the illusion of being outdoors.

Pane-staking Process
Setting the glass was every bit as complicated as its design. Two cranes were required, and eight men on a scaffold slid it into place. The glass must withstand 100 mph winds and keep the house warm when the mercury dips below zero during typical Montana winters. The glass is an inch thick and is insulated with high-density foam, silicone and chinking, but it's set so deeply within its frame that the sealant is hidden.

Practicality Meets Panache
Lazy Bay uses both radiant heating beneath floors, as well as forced-air heat. Once a constant temperature is reached, the furnace doesn't have to work very hard to maintain it. One reason is that the wood and stone absorb the sun's heat and radiate it back into the home, making it energy efficient as well as gorgeous.

Contemporarily Rustic
Hunter Dominick, owner of Hunter & Co., an interior design firm in Whitefish, Montana, accentuated the home’s natural beauty—with Walt's help, of course—through its decor. When it came to making the final decorativemeliving.com/store/product.cfm?store_id choices for the home, Hunter had another "silent" partner: the windows. "Those windows and the view just outside them had a big say in the decorating process," says Hunter. "It's a major focal point, and it had a lot of impact on what we did." The combination of slate and glass gives the house a contemporary edge while the timber posts and trusses maintain its rustic feel.

Lazy Bay was conceived and built not only as a vacation home, but as an escape from the ordinary. "I wanted whomever bought this place to know they are on a Montana mountainside lake," Walt says. "And I designed character into the house so anyone who comes here would feel that they're someplace special."

Did he succeed? One look through the majestic windows will tell you everything you need to know.

Read the full story in the December/January 2005-2006 issue of Timber Home Living.