Today was just one of those days.  One of the days I am sure I will look back on, many years from now, and remember all the details and the way I felt.  A great day.

My little building team and our framer are doing an amazing job, with a not so ordinary little house in a not so ordinary place.  Building in the winter in West Glacier wasn’t going to be easy, but building a 3 story Lookout wasn’t suppose to be easy.  Nothing about this project has been easy.  And right now my framer is busy building the entire roof system on the garage slab, which on Monday (if all goes as planned) will be hoisted up to the top with the biggest crane in the Flathead Valley.  Totally normal.  Stay tuned for a video next week.

The Lookout is one of those projects that every time I get a chance to see it (not as often as one would think) I have been happy…because things are as good or better than I hoped.  For someone who has spent the past year planning and imagining every detail with the very best builder-boss around…it should be just that way.

Today, for the first time, I climbed the ladder to the 3rd floor of the Lookout and I expected to feel like I felt the day I walked up the steps to the second floor…happy.  It is not like I didn’t know the view, I have been looking at it for months while we went through site work and for months since we started building (and honestly, I have been looking at this view since I was a little girl) so I expected it to be the same.  What’s another 12 feet up in the air?

But the third floor was better…for so many reasons…some of which I really can’t put into words – and I honestly have to say it was just one of those times when I felt surprised to feel SO lucky.  Happy tears lucky. For some reason, right at that moment, the inversion fog which has been covering northwest Montana for the past 3 days lifted just enough for me to see what I hadn’t seen before…and to imagine I just might be able to see a little bit more than I thought (maybe a glimpse of Glacier Park’s Livingston range up there after all?)  And I had that “this is far better than I could have ever hoped for” feeling.

When the roof goes on the Lookout Monday I will be one excited girl, and my framer Cal will be able to sleep again, and all the people taking part in this project will be giving each other high fives…but I doubt that will top what I felt today.   I’ve come along way from a sketch on a napkin and a builder who knew I needed something extra special…the third floor is like the icing on the cake.

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