Wasatch Range Revival

Audrey Hall

• Architects

Applied products

Platner Dining Table Knoll

The location in Park City, Utah’s Wasatch Range was stunning, but the 1980s-era log house with its cavernous spaces, orangey wood tones, massive log columns and beams, and dated river rock needed right-sizing and modernizing to suit an empty-nester couple who referred to the original structure as a “log cabin on steroids.” The challenge for the JLF Architects and Big-D Signature design-build team was to reduce the scale of the home without compromising its structural integrity and while maintaining the original footprint. The near total transformation meant adding walls to divide enormous main floor rooms into more intimate, dedicated spaces, and visually lowering soaring living room ceilings with a Mountain Modern update that replaced round log beams with vaulted steel trusses layered over an earthy-gray-stained reclaimed plank ceiling. A fireplace facelift removed bulky river rock in favor of stacked Montana moss rock in a simple design that gives the great room a texture-rich contemporary focal point that connects the interior to its regional Mountain West setting.

Other changes included reversing the order of kitchen and dining room and lining the spaces with contemporary steel-and-glass window walls that accordion back to open fully to the outdoors. The new Euro-style kitchen was divided by function with a large central cooking-prep island and a more intimate island space dedicated to preparing and sharing morning coffee. The revised glass-walled layout also provides a central sight line all the way through both spaces, enabling the homeowners to see mountain sunsets out the front of the house while relaxing in the hidden pool just steps beyond the back door. To bring the yawning primary bedroom suite down to size, the team lowered the bathroom ceiling from 18 to 10 feet, adding modern steel windows and sleek Taj Mahal quartzite countertops to mix with the rustic appeal of reclaimed-wood doors and cabinetry. The bedroom fireplace also was modernized with stacked fieldstone and a simple Corten steel mantel that will gain patina with age.

Outdoors, design-build team member Verdone Landscape Architects crafted an integrated series of layered outdoor spaces, native plantings, and walkways for relaxing and entertaining. Elegant seating on the front yard patio surrounds a fire pit, situated for enjoying the views, while the backyard gained a swimming pool concealed behind a stacked Alaskan yellow cedar retaining wall. Scuppers on the wall provide the soothing sound of water splashing into a channel below, and the water feature helps define a spacious walk-out patio, highlighted with uplit aspen trees for evening ambience.