Finding Solitude

Maison Studio and JH Builders join forces to achieve a renovation that brings a house into balance—with itself, and with the landscape in which it sits.

The new owners of a 7,000-square-foot, 5-bed, 5-bath home built in 2018 in the Solitude neighborhood wanted to align its interior with its exterior and the surrounding landscape and to also align the interior with their tastes. The original exterior materials palette of reclaimed hand-hewn chinked siding and Montana moss rock fit seamlessly with the vernacular of the environment. The existing interiors—stark white kitchen cabinets and countertops and exaggerated ceiling heights—were discordant with the home’s exterior, though, and also contrasted with the landscape.

“It didn’t match the mountain aesthetic of the exterior,” says Saxon Curpier, who cofounded Maison Studio with Kimberly Dean. Neither did it match the new owners’ aesthetic. While creating harmony between the home’s interior and exterior, the clients wanted to include some elements traditionally found in Western design, but for these to be accents within a contemporary aesthetic rather than dominant design moves.

To achieve the goals of the clients, a couple from the Bay Area, Maison Studio worked with JH Builders, the firm that built the original property in 2018.

Maison employed a neutral monotone color palette, from creamy taupe to soft blues. These colors bring lightness and brightness to the interiors. “That’s where the ‘contemporary’ comes in,” Dean says. “Nothing is overly adorned.” This carries through into new elements imagined by Maison and realized by JH Builders: stained fir trusses, purlins, and wood cladding on the ceilings; floor-to-ceiling stone fireplaces; reclaimed-wood mantels; and handrails wrapped in hand-stitched leather speak to Western design and the surrounding landscape but don’t feel too heavy or overt.

In addition to using traditionally Western materials—wood, stone, and leather—in moderation, Maison also gave traditional Western design pieces a contemporary twist. The centerpiece of the renovated kitchen is a hand-sculpted crystal antler chandelier. “It’s a fresh take on a traditional piece that you’d find in a Western home,” Dean says. Although the fixture itself is airy and graceful, installing it was hard work: “We had to build a complete scaffolding over the large Leicht island with European oak butcher block countertop to rewire and install the new chandelier,” says Andrew Miller of JH Builders.

To invite the new interior into deeper dialogue with the landscape around the house—the home sits on five acres—the back wall of the great room was removed and a steel-frame-and-glass accordion Jada door system was installed. This mirrors the original glass-and-steel entryway and allows you to see through the home from the front door. As you approach the entryway, you appreciate the new interior color palette, but it is the dramatic Teton views rising from behind the great room that dominate, creating the sense that the towering mountains are an extension of the interior.

The renovation not only brought more of the feeling of outside into the house, but also included adding more actual outdoor living space. Without changing the home’s footprint, JH Builders constructed an outdoor kitchen. Local artisan Trevor Thomas of Metallurgy built cabinets in patinated stainless steel, and Brandner Design did the countertops; nature-aged Trestle Wood siding was also used.

“A lot of the renovation had been in the original architect’s plans for the property but hadn’t been executed on,” says Miller. “It’s fun to work with new clients and designers to complete the vision.”