The homesMountain modern
Blackpine House
Photo: Clay Banks / Unsplash
- Where
- Spearfish Canyon
- Size
- 2,950 sq ft
- Rooms
- 3 bedrooms, 3 baths
- Completed
- 2025
- Style
- Mountain modern
They wanted a house that disappears into the trees at dusk and glows from the inside.
The lot is a bench of meadow against a wall of pine and birch, twenty minutes up the canyon. The owners had camped on it for three summers before they called us, and they knew exactly where the morning light landed.
We set the house where their tent used to go. Charred-look cedar siding and a dark standing-seam roof let it fall back into the hillside; inside, everything is pale: white oak floors, plaster walls, and a great room that runs two storeys to a wall of black-framed glass.
A wood stove heats the main floor on all but the coldest days. The garage and mudroom sit on the north side as a windbreak, so the south side stays open to the meadow.
What they asked for
- A house that does not shout from the road
- One big room for cooking, eating and sitting
- Wood heat, with a backup they never have to think about
- A mudroom that can take four seasons of boots
What we built
- Dark cedar and steel outside, white oak and plaster inside
- A 19-foot great room facing the meadow
- A sealed wood stove and an in-floor heat system
- A north-side mudroom and gear wall off the garage
The great room, facing the meadow
Kitchen and the long table
The stove room
“The house sits exactly where they said it should. We watch the light come down the canyon every morning from the kitchen.”
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Photo: Michael Brown / Unsplash