On a wooded site in a ski village just three miles from Sugarloaf Mountain, our clients–a family with two teenage children–had a modern three-story ski house that had been built in 1972. Our design team renovated the house to meet today’s amenities while keeping its vintage charm closely intact.


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First, to break up the height of the structure and add more visual interest, we renovated the 1970’s T1-11 siding. New windows were replaced throughout, mostly in their existing openings,  and the large window assemblies were designed in a way to achieve additional cross ventilation. We also designed a new 10-foot by 10-foot mudroom/gear room addition at the entry side of the house to help break up the height.

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The existing floor plan included two bedrooms on the first floor, as well as a bathroom and a lower-level living room, mostly for the kids. The addition of the mudroom now offers a more functional place to store all the different gear that is used in the summer and the winter, with enough room to keep bikes, skis, snowshoes, coats, boats, and more. The second floor is the main living space and includes the kitchen, pantry, dining, and living room. The third floor–with the best views of Sugarloaf Mountain–includes the master bedroom, a bunk room, and a bath. We chose materials like a Pine V-match ceiling in the living room and third floor. Hemlock posts were added in the living room to replace a bookshelf/half wall that previously had closed off the space. The carpet was updated on the first and second floors, and rough-cut pine shiplap was used in the mudroom and some accent walls throughout the house. The exterior siding included horizontal rough-cut shiplap around the first floor and vertical, smooth, narrower shiplap around the top two floors. A new standing-seam metal roof was also added to help with shedding the snow off of the roof and to prevent leaking issues. This design did bring about some unique challenges; our team worked to come up with a solution for when the snow slid off the roof and knocked down the plumbing vent pipes and wood stave pipe. 
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Now, the family can enjoy the modern comforts and added functionality of their classic ski retreat, aka, their “Happy Place.”