AT LONG LAST LOG...

Dave and I have had an ongoing love affair with logs for years so we knew that our retirement home would be filled with rustic furnishings. For nearly twenty six years of our marriage, Dave and I had slept on a waterbed that I had bought before I met him. It was a novelty, the grandkids especially loved it but its time had come; so as we have replaced our furniture in recent years, we have directed our choices accordingly.

The old waterbed

We began researching log furniture companies and found one that had an extensive collection as well as good prices, JHE Log Furniture Place. They have been great to work with and Jason has been very accommodating in our many deliveries. Our first purchase was our master bedroom set for our home here in Texas, a king sized log bed, eight drawer dresser and two nightstands. As soon as we placed our order, Dave dismantled the waterbed and I advertised it on Craig's List where it was promptly snatched up!

The headboard is very heavy and it took our son Charles and a friend of his to bring it in the house for me!

Dave set up our bed, we have rounded log fronts on the drawers underneath for extra storage. We slept on an air mattress inside the "log box" until our new mattress was delivered.

Dave and I had purchased the bedding a full three years before we got our bed! We've just had it packed away until the time was finally right!

Our eight drawer dresser has the rounded log front on the drawer face too.

The night stands complete the set, mine has two drawers and Dave has one drawer, again we have the rounded log fronts on our drawers.

This winter we will begin the new flooring upstairs in the Master Bedroom at the Mountainview Hideaway. I can not wait until we get to move our bedroom set into place up there; I just know it will look stunning!

REMODELING PROJECT

The area outside of the guest bedroom has had two different names, "The Transition Room", "The Office" but I think we will end up referring to it as the Library. When we bought the house it had inexpensive (cheap)bookcases attached to the wall in this area. What we didn't know until we had our contractor begin tearing them out was that, they were attached first and then the flooring and the wood walls went in! Another "scratch your head" reaction to the previous owners and their "different" ideas. Oh well. Needless to say, this project became more involved than what we had estimated.

This picture is from the previous owners listing before we bought the house. It just looks cluttered and junky in my opinion.

These next pictures are right after we bought the house. They left the desk behind and on our April trip, my sister-in-law Peggy and my best friend Brenda, dismantled it so we could take it to the dump.

The desk is gone and the work begins!

Our contractor tore out the old bookcases and reworked the walls for us. The room only has a small window and no overhead lighting. We had him put recessed lighting into the ceiling and then he redid the wood on the ceiling too. Gone are the diagonal planks, they've been replaced with beautiful new wood.

The window has been trimmed out and I will measure for wood blinds so I can install them at a later date. We hung Dave's canvas photo of the Old Faithful Inn at the base of the stairs so that it transitions smoothly into the Family Room (AKA The Yellowstone Room) to the right. We will probably change out the flooring to wood on the stairs and we will also have a railing and banister put in, after we make our final move and get the bulky furniture moved in upstairs. I hung a lot of our family, outdoor pictures on the stair wall.

Some very dear friends of ours, Dennis and Lois, gave us this rug as a house warming gift and it is a perfect fit for the newly remodeled Library!

We will put both bookcases in here and they will house our books and movie collection, which we will condense into zip up binders. On our April trip before the flooring was done in the library, I set up one of the bookcases just to get an idea of how it will look and I am pleased with the result!

The new flooring turned out great!

I am excited to get up to the house in a couple of days and start putting this room together!

TWEAKING

One of the many things we did on our April 2014 trip was to hang pictures that I brought up as well as tweak items, to make rooms complete. My best friend Brenda is SUCH an asset on these trips because she has a wealth of knowledge and she is fearless! Dave and I had the Hopkins Mountainview Hideaway sign made last summer and I knew that I wanted it hung in the family room. It would be the first thing you would see when you stepped into the family room along with items displayed on the shelf that is about 8 feet up along the wall. We got the required hanging items and Brenda went to town!

Another room we tweaked was the Guest Bedroom AKA "The Glacier Room". We moved the antique prints that used to hang over the bed and placed them to the right of the doorway. I brought up one of dave's gorgeous pictures he took in 2012 of Lower Grinell Lake with Beargrass, inside of Glacier National Park. This hangs to the right of the chest of drawers.The Great Northern Railroad lantern on top of the chest of drawers is from Dave's collection. Over the years he has collected these lanterns from the various railroads that have all merged at one time or another to create the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad that he has worked for over 32 years. The Great Northern Railroad has been his favorite over the years. When he was a little boy living in the Seattle area his family would ride the Great Northern's Empire Builder to Michigan to visit family. This route actually skirts Glacier National Park and James Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railroad and nicknamed "The Empire Builder" himself, was instrumental in promoting Glacier National Park and advocated that it be designated a National Park. We have a very solid connection and it was important to incorporate this interesting information into our dream home.

We had a bear clock made for the bedroom and we hung it over the bed. I also brought up the second Juniper lamp (Dave had bought these 2 lamps last year in the Grand Canyon when he did his "Rim to Rim" hike with his 2 younger brothers) and moved the second nightstand into the bedroom. I was really pleased with the way it worked out.

Last summer when Dave had to undergo radiation he had a great attitude over the whole ordeal. He had decided to not feel sorry for himself but rather, asked God to let him be a blessing to someone else. God answered that prayer in the form of a parking valet at the radiation facility. Fabrizzio and his family moved from El Salvador to Texas a few years ago for political reasons. They had lived very comfortably in their former life but the suddenness of the move really hurt them financially; he felt blessed to even have a job. As he and Dave got to know one another better, Dave learned that he was an artist. Years ago he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's so he had to teach himself to draw, using dots instead of brush strokes. He had asked God to heal him, which God did but he never returned to using brush strokes. He asked if he could draw our Mountanview Hideaway for us and naturally Dave said YES! The end result just touched my heart deeply! We had it matted and framed and this past April, it was hung in the living room and eventually our leather sofa will sit underneath.

Dave and I with Fabrizzio and his lovely wife Jaleesa at Dave's "End of Radiation Party", August 2013.

I brought up another area rug that I had found earlier this year at Canton Trade Days. I have to be careful because rugs are my weakness and we have reached our limit on any more rugs for the house. This one however I fell in love with and decided it will go in the living room.

Dave was on a mission to find another antique cooler for us to keep firewood in. He found this smaller red one on E bay and once I got it to the house, I swapped it out with the turquoise one I had brought up last year. That one is now in the dining room next to the larger wood stove.

I brought up a load of books and placed some of them in the bookcase in the family room.

The other bookcase holds books and games that I brought up. This bookcase is in the "office" area which we had remodeled.

Tomorrow I will post pictures about the "office" remodel.

TABLES

One of the pieces of furniture that I brought up on this trip was our sofa table. I also brought up our "Yellowstone Family Vacation" photo albums from previous years. I decided to place the photo albums, several Tom Murphy photography books as well as our antique cameras inside of the sofa table. After Dave's Dad passed away and they were going through their parents things, we brought home my father-in-law's camera as well as an old Bakelite view-master from the 1950's. I went on to E bay and found all of the old view-master reels from the National Parks which are fun to look at. On top of the sofa table I placed some of my favorite wildlife photos that Dave has taken over the years along with a small lamp that was a house-warming gift from our Mechanic. I set up the sofa table under the living room window and hung a valance on the window which I had brought up with me from our house here in Texas.

The coffee table was more of a challenge because it was so heavy and bulky. In 2004 I came across an article written about an artist who was using reclaimed wood from the Old Faithful Inn's renovations to craft frames. I contacted Rich Holstein and a friendship grew from that first phone call. I ordered an 11x14 frame for a Valentine's day gift for Dave. After that, we purchased a few more frames and had him make us a mirror too. Last year, I brought one of the 11x14 frames and the mirror with me; this year I brought the other 11x14 frame to hang in the family room alongside the other pieces.

The coffee table was a custom piece that we had Rich make us back in 2009. He finished it and we picked it up from his workshop after one of our Yellowstone vacations. It is made from different sections of the Old Faithful Inn wood and the underneath side he has detailed where each section came from. The top has 6 tiles inset depicting an old photo of the Old faithful Inn from years ago.

The coffee table traveled well to Montana and our contractor gave us gals a hand and we got it into the family room AKA "The Yellowstone Room". It looks right at home in here and is just the right thing we needed to make this room complete!!

SPRINGTIME IN MONTANA

This past April, I planned another working trip at the Mountainview Hideaway. I was excited because my sister-in-law Peggy flew down to Dallas and we made the LONG 1,800+ mile drive to the house. We left at 4 AM and drove 1,000 miles that first day, spending the night in Casper, Wyoming.

I was in the midst of doing a "Flat Stanley" project for our youngest grand-daughter, so I taped him to a paint stirring stick and took pictures along the way!

We left Casper at 5AM the next day and made our way into Montana!

We were making such good time that we stopped in Bozeman at a store that carried rustic furnishings and stretched our legs for an hour. We arrived at the house around 6:30 that evening which meant it was light enough for Peggy to be able to enjoy the scenery as we got closer and closer to the house. After I gave her the tour of the house and the property, we decided that we would only bring in our luggage and relax for the rest of the evening.

After a good night's sleep, we enjoyed our morning coffee and a fire in the dining room wood stove then set out unloading the van; which was overflowing with stuff.

We managed to unload everything from the van with the exception of the heavy, coffee table that was still in the back. Charlie and Dave had loaded it up for me and it was going to take some manpower to get it back out. We changed clothes and went into town to get breakfast and do some grocery shopping. The next day my best friend Brenda would be flying in to the Kalispell airport and then our work projects would begin.