Calder and Starr’s House

My brother Calder and his wife Starr just finished an amazing addition to their house. It all started when they restored a cabin from the 1890′s.  A family of 8 kids originally lived in this 800 square foot cabin. Calder said the dad worked in a mine up snake creek canyon and once his horse fell on him.  They amputated his leg on the kitchen table of the brick house across the street (that is being restored right now by a couple from Texas).  The dad died six months later and the mom raised all the kids alone in this cabin. Starr and Calder gutted and redid the cabin.  They were up against raccoons in the crawl space, a beehive in the corner of the living room and having to lift up the cabin to fix the foundation. They transformed that cabin into something so beautiful, down to every detail.  Starr and Calder are not the kind of couple that buys a spec house in the burbs, their house is art.

It wasn’t long after the cabin was restored that someone gave them a 1000 square foot barn from the early 1900′s.   They took the barn apart piece by piece, labeled it, and moved it to their lot.  Then they had a barn raising.  The word barn does not do justice to this structure. There is a sail boat in the main part of the barn right now and a large workshop to the side.

Once they had their first baby the 800 square foot cabin felt a little cramped so they decided to build an addition.  They worked with their architect, Todd Drennan, and did almost all the work themselves.  This included Calder buying a whole stone building from Ephriam, Utah, moving the stones to Midway and splitting them himself to use for the addition.  The wood stairs are made from old bowling lanes.   The floors are polished concrete.  This house is an absolute work of art.  The lighting and the views make me want to just take pictures in it all day.

Todd Drennan of Modern Detail in Midway, Utah was the architect on these projects.  We are hoping to eventually bring him down to Grand Junction to help us improve the natural light situation in our house.  I need more beautiful diffused light in my house.  Life is too short for bad lighting.

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