The Bastian Guide · Casebook · No. 04 · Estes Park, CO · Custom Homes · 19 Months · 3,400 sq. ft.

§ Casebook No. 04

The Mountain
Great Room, Estes Park.

A ground-up custom home built around one double-height room, engineered to carry serious mountain snow load without compromising the wall of glass the clients wanted facing the peaks.

Double-height great room with exposed timber beams, a stone fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling windows facing the mountains — Fig. 01 · The Mountain Great Room, completed.

§ 01 · The Brief

T he clients purchased a wooded lot outside Estes Park with a clear view corridor to the peaks and a single non-negotiable request: a great room with real height and real glass, not a compromise version of either. The site sits at elevation with a serious annual snow load, which meant the roof structure and window performance both had to be engineered well beyond a typical Front Range spec.

Beyond the great room, the brief called for a practical four-bedroom layout that wouldn't feel like an afterthought next to the architectural centerpiece — bedrooms and a mudroom that worked hard, not just a dramatic room that photographed well and nothing else.

§ 02 · What Was Built

The scope,
room by room.

Double-height great room

An engineered timber-frame structure with exposed beams, a full-height stone fireplace, and a curtain wall of glass facing the mountain view.

Snow-load engineering

Structural design calculated for the site's specific elevation and snow load, well above standard Front Range requirements, stamped by a licensed structural engineer.

High-performance glazing

Triple-pane, high-performance window and door systems selected specifically for the elevation's temperature swings and wind exposure.

Four-bedroom layout

A practical bedroom wing separated from the great room's public volume, with a mudroom sized for real mountain-house gear storage.

Kitchen & pantry

A full custom kitchen with a walk-in pantry, positioned to serve the great room without competing with the fireplace and window wall for visual attention.

Radiant heat & HRV

Whole-home radiant floor heat paired with a heat-recovery ventilation system suited to the tightly sealed, high-elevation envelope.

§ 03 · The Signature Move

A window wall
engineered, not just installed.

A wall of glass at elevation is not a standard install — it's a structural and thermal problem that has to be solved before it's a design feature. We worked with the structural engineer to carry the roof load around the glazing rather than through it, and specified a window package rated for the specific wind and temperature exposure of the site.

The result is a great room that looks effortless from the inside and is, quietly, one of the most technically demanding rooms we've built.

Exterior view of the custom home showing the great room's window wall facing the mountains — Fig. 02 · Exterior, window wall.

§ 04

"Everybody wants the glass wall until they find out what the snow load actually requires above it. Our job is making both things true at once — the view and the engineering."

Bastian Build Co.

§ 05 · Details

Materials,
timeline, investment.

Materials

Timber frame, stone, triple-pane glazing

Exposed timber beams, a full-height natural stone fireplace, and triple-pane high-performance glazing throughout the great room's window wall.

Timeline

19 months, land to move-in

Roughly five months of design, engineering, and permitting given the site's structural requirements, followed by a fourteen-month construction window.

Investment

$2.1M–$2.4M band

A ground-up custom home of this scope and elevation, including engineered structure and high-performance glazing, typically lands between $2.1M and $2.4M.

§ 06