Building the Lodge: Design Inspiration

We have been dreaming about what our mountain house will look like for what feels like an eternity. Before we found our piece of property we had been scouring the real estate listings in the area and only growing more disappointed when we didn’t find anything. Eventually we decided to build our house so we could create our dream vacation home from scratch. It’s been a long process so far – it’s been over a year since we bought our lot – and we’ve still got several more months to go {fingers crossed we can be in by Christmas!}. I thought I’d share a bit about the inspiration behind the design of our house.

{here’s the shell of our house!}

The overall “look” we’ve been going for is sort of our definition of mountain modern. We want the house to have a lot of modern elements and finishes with rustic touches throughout. We don’t want it to feel too “cabiny” but we also don’t want it to feel like a house, so hopefully when we’re all done it’ll feel just right – like a mountain modern lodge.

The exterior finish ideas came from some houses we found on Houzz – our siding is a dark gray with some blue hues, accented with orangy/brown trim, a lighter gray roof, brown deck and black windows. The trim around the windows will be the same color as the siding so that the windows will pop and be more of the focal point, rather than the trim. The deck railing will have black metal posts/railing, then the center will be made of cables to avoid obstructing our view. Here’s a house with similar exterior colors that inspired us:

{similar siding color to this house, very similar stain color.}

Moving inside, we wanted to create big, open gathering spaces for friends and family to hang out while they come visit us. It was important to us to capture the view of the river bluff as much as possible, so we designed a wall of windows with a double sliding glass door right in the middle. The slider will lead out to the deck.

{we’ll have a big floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace with wood ceilings in the great room.}

The house has five bedrooms, including a bunk room so the kids can pile in and get cozy. The bedrooms are modest/small in size so that the bulk of the space in the house can be in the living areas.

{we’ll have two sets of bunk beds in the bunk room and maybe some fun bean bags or kids chairs – I’m super excited about the bunk room!}

I’m so, so excited to see what the great room/kitchen/dining room will look like when they’re complete. It is a very tall, open space with a lot of beautiful natural light coming in. There’s a lot of possibilities here, as well as a lot of challenges working with so much height.

Here are some photos we’ve used for inspiration with the kitchen:

{we love the open shelves with white subway tile + dark grout on the walls.}
{this is a very similar layout to our kitchen – complete with the subway tile + open shelves. we also love the waterfall edge of the counter top on the island and the wood on the front of the island.}
{Alex is obsessed with these dark green cabinets. We think they’ll look great against the white subway tile back splash and a beautiful gray quartz counter. I also love the floors in this house.}

And our master bathroom will be based off of this design, with similar finishes in the other two bathrooms:

{we fell in love with this bathroom design – we have selected a fun patterned floor tile for the master bathroom and a complimentary tile for the main floor bathroom and plan to pull in some similar design elements. we’ll use a light gray penny tile in the shower floor with white subway tile in the master, then a fun white tile in the main floor bathroom above the tub. the basement bathroom will have a beautiful “crushed stone” looking floor tile and white subway tile above the tub. all three bathrooms will have a beautiful dark gray quartz counter. the vanities will be knotty cherry, a wood local to the Pacific Northwest, and a light stain.}

We haven’t chosen floors yet; however, we love, love, love this wide plank, lighter wood floor:

{Alex is also obsessed with the leather chair featured in this photo – I think it’s safe to expect it to end up in our living room?}

Storage is a big deal to me. We’ve got a lot of outdoor gear and I have a feeling our gear collection is only going to grow and keep growing as our kids get bigger. We’re using some fun design elements to create a custom “boot bench” on one side of the front entry, then there will be a big open closet on the other side. We also have two large storage rooms down in the basement.

The basement will be the kid zone and sort of the hangout area. We’re planning on having some cozy seating, a big TV and a wet bar, along with a kids corner. Maybe after the kids get older we’ll put in some kind of a game table {Foosball? pool table? shuffleboard?}.

We have a lot of decisions to make still, including furniture and decor selection and landscaping {!!!}, and I think we have some fun ideas and inspiration to draw from to pull everything together. We can hardly wait to see the finished product!