Building the Lodge: The Guts

We’ve hit an exciting milestone – most of the “guts” of our mountain house are complete! We have plumbing, HVAC and electrical! It’s really cool walking through the house seeing what hides behind the walls.

Two days before baby Hannah was born Alex and I made a day trip out to the house to do an electrical walk through with the electrician and pick the spot where all of the outlets and switches go – it was a very long day but a really cool process getting to make so many big decisions about the electrical.

The house is basically all framed – they’re finishing up the fireplace framing now and that’s pretty much it. We are really starting to be able to picture the finished home.

Alex and his mom were out at the Lodge during her recent trip out here and were surprised to see that the floor of the deck had already been installed. They loved sitting out on the deck, enjoying a beer, and imagining the future of relaxing and lounging out there. The deck begins off of the great room, looks out over the river bluff and the valley, then wraps almost halfway around the house. There will be two stairways – one off the front/big sliding doors, and the other off of the kitchen door/outdoor eating area, which will lead down to the hot tub.

We chose a medium/dark brown Trex decking for the floor, then there will be a cable railing with black metal framing/supports. It gets SO HOT out there in the summer that we opted to have a covered portion of the deck to give us some reprieve from the heat in the summer, or from the rain/snow in the winter. We’ll install a ceiling fan and some heaters, too.

Alex and I made an unexpected trip out to the house last weekend to approve the electrical locations and meet with our cabinet maker to design the kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities. It was so fun to see the deck – we brought some camp chairs and had lunch out there and we got to bring Hannah to the house for the first time.

All of the exterior finishes have been selected and many of the interior finishes have been chosen. We’re working with our designer to make the final decisions and start to really pull everything together. It’s been really fun to see the finishing touches and imagine what everything will look like when it’s complete. We still have a lot of decisions to make but it feels like we’re making tremendous progress!