The Neville’s Big Creek Home
Veteran Bitterroot Valley log home builder shares his own custom abode
By Brian D’Ambrosio
Photos by Laurie Lane
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Log ceiling of the great room
Montana
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Part of the beauty of living the log home lifestyle is enjoying the natural surroundings of the area where you’ve elected to build. For noted log home architect Dick Neville, choosing the perfect setting to live out his log-home dream couldn’t have come any easier, and the results of his architectural aspirations couldn’t be any more attractive or strikingly expressive.
Dick Neville’s Big Creek home, located in the Bitterroot Valley, slightly north of Victor, encompasses 48 beautiful acres, including 900 feet of Bitterroot River frontage. In fact, this fine abode at once suggesting taste, grace, innovation and refinement, is Neville’s original, custom-made home. The august abode’s namesake, Big Creek, runs through the property and is a pebble’s throw away from the back deck. Singular trout fishing experiences are plentiful on both the creek and the river.
Entering Neville’s Big Creek property is like taking a step back in time to a plainer, less complicated way of life. It’s trading the stress and pressure of everyday urban living for the peace and solitude of the country, with the scent of fresh spruce and the effortless pleasure of a quiet country morning. The home enjoys total privacy and prominently reveals views of the bold and pure Sapphire Mountains to the east and the majestic Bitterroot Mountain Range to the west.
The Big Creek exemplifies its owner’s rigid building requirements. The building is constructed with dead, dry standing timber (Engelmann’s spruce), providing outstanding stability with limited checking (cracking) and shrinkage. The home was constructed from logs churned out from Neville’s own patented log-forming machine. Precision pre-cut logs in lengths up to sixty feet with 7-18” diameters were used; no unsightly splices can be found in the wall and gable logs, guaranteeing a more creatively exquisite and structurally sound building.
This original, award-winning, and famous log home was designed in 1998 and built in 1999-2000. Following its construction it quickly became recognizable in the world of log homes. In concept, Big Creek was intended to showcase the distinctive characteristics of the Neville Log Home company. One of Dick Neville’s patented trademarks (of which there are seven), epitomized in Big Creek’s style, is the long-log advantage. The key component of the long-log advantage is in its use of long, straight logs, as opposed to the use of butt joints, the splicing of smaller logs used to make a single log. (Butt-joint splices in wall logs often shift and tear apart from each other.)
“When building the finest log homes, most of it depends on the logs. This house uses the long-log advantage, which is a symbol of both physical and aesthetic integrity,” says Dick Neville.
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Log Home Master Bath
Montana
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Neville was the first in the log home industry to build a house without butt-joints and to find a way of keeping large rooms open and free of vertical obstacles (by eliminating columns or walls used to support a cathedral or vaulted ceiling in a log home). By designing and building the machinery that can produce long-logs, (up to 60 feet, in fact), Dick was able to change the way log homes are fashioned and the way they appear. Big Creek’s logs were machined using a full bearing Swedish cope and full round chink style method of construction. Machined logs give a consistent diameter the entire length of the log (7” - 18” diameter up to 60’ long). All of the logs have a “hand hewn” finish; hand hewn logs are hewn on exposed surfaces only, therefore maintaining a precise fit.
“Dick Neville has created some pretty remarkable and innovative wood products and this home really typifies his home-building visions and ideas. He knows wood more than anybody I’ve ever met,” says Chris Lane, marketing and advertising director for Neville Log Homes.
Knowledge is an immeasurably great and invaluable resource and surely the formula for success in the log-home business, and through years of required research and testing, Dick has perfected a technically and aesthetically superior fabrication. Big Creek incorporates many of Dick’s architectural ideas, including a full-log roof system, a spiral staircase, large scissor trusses, and a geothermal system preventing air and water infiltration. (Geothermal systems are environmentally-friendly heating and cooling systems that transfer heat to and from the soil.)
This delightfully distinctive log home combines American tradition with contemporary design. The main floor includes a great room, a spacious kitchen, and a spiral staircase. In addition, an 800-square-foot master suite features a master bath, and a nearby 10-person hot tub room. Laundry facilities are between the kitchen and the three-car garage. The lower level includes a guest quarters with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, along with a large ultra-modern entertainment room and a sleek pool room. The scissor-trussed great room makes a stylish group gathering place or an intimate setting for two.
Additionally, the main level’s great room has an ornate cultured stone fireplace where a fire can undoubtedly turn a gloomy winter day into a cheerful, cozy memory. The great room is just one of the places in this 7,154 square-foot residence marked by snug, friendly intimacy. Big Creek’s kitchen is a unique blend of warm butternut cabinetry, rustic handmade lighting and the strength of log. Englemann’s spruce floor joists can be found above the perfectly centered handsome marble island.
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Log home frame
Montana
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The vaulted ceilings, large expanses of glass and open flowing floor plan allows the home to take advantage of the views as well as providing a bright, open living environment. A 10-person Jacuzzi tub fits perfectly in the corner of the illuminated master bedroom. To increase the amount of natural light in this room, a skylight was added. The interior loft bedroom also demonstrates how the addition of a skylight can brighten any room. Throughout the home the Nevilles have proudly displayed old photos of the many happy times their family spent in the Bitterroot Valley area.
The landscaping, replete with homemade ponds and a diversionary waterwheel drainage gushing past the patio, provides a storybook setting that adds to the charm. Landscaping the lot included creating an environmentally undisturbed zone between the river and the home. This area has been left in its natural state. As a result, the property is resplendent with plants, trees and wildlife. Geese and ducks commonly visit the river, and nearly every morning the Nevilles are treated to deer or moose stepping over their property.
“All your stress just goes away when you enter this house and property,” says Neville.
By the time he was ten, Dick Neville could tell a spruce from a pine by the distinct smell of its sawdust. As a taut country youth, he helped out around his family’s sawmill in Olney, Montana, and then later he became the head sawyer at a mill in Darby. Throughout his life, he’s felled trees, driven log trucks, built sawmills, and has been a proficient welder, cutter and log machinery repairmen.
Neville says that when he was a young kid he always wanted to build a log home for the knowledge and skill so derived. Finally, decades later, after patenting seven U.S. mill products and revolutionizing the way log homes are built, he oversaw the creation of his very own home, smack in the center of the stunningly sensational Bitterroot Valley.
Today, while still very much involved with Neville Log Homes, Dick Neville is semi-retired, electing to spend the majority of his days traveling with wife, Nancy, visiting their geographically fanned out grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As a result of this decision, Big Creek is now on the market and if you’re interested in seeing more of this alluring, lovely log home, visit www.nevilog.com.
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