Durango Log Home Builders - Dyerbilt Log Homes Illustrated Article


	The fireplace mantel, a gift from contractor Terry Ddyer, is accented with iron bands, copper tubing and copper nails. Victorian-style tufted leather couches and chairs are seated around a 1920s copper chocolate pot covered into a coffee table. Dave Mmanley cut the stone for the tabletop with its steel rim and picked the brilliant colored fieldstone from the property for the wood-burning fireplace.
Durango Log Home Builders An aptitude test Bryan Hondru took in school indicated that he should pursue a career as a forest ranger. He liked the outdoors, but instead he became a commercial insurance broker. He and his wife, Joyce, spent most of their adult lives in western Pennsylvania. Even while raising three sons, however, Bryan’s passion for forests and mountains did not diminish. The family’s love of heights eventually led them to build a home on top of Mount Washington, overlooking downtown Pittsburgh, with a view of Heinz Field and PNC Park.The Hondrus also spent many a vacation skiing in the Rockies. During this time, they often looked at real estate, hoping one day to build a vacation log home. “In 1997, my son Mark called to tell me I should catch the first plane from Pittsburgh to Durango, Colorado,” Bryan recalls. “He had been camping in the San Juan Mountains and had found an area that he thought would be perfect for our log home.”The Hondrus agreed and purchased a 35-acre parcel bordering a beaver dam with a 12-acre stocked bass and trout lake in the just-opened gated community of Celadon. Situated on Missionary Ridge at around 7,500 feet elevation, the property suited the couple’s taste for heights and would afford them a 360-degree panorama that included the Animas Valley all the way to Durango and featured a view into the Animas River Gorge, where the jump scene from the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was filmed. Bryan and Joyce selected Edgewood Log Structures in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to produce their logs. The company also provided the drafting and structural engineering documents, based on the design plans drawn by architect Joe Sebestyen of Designlab in Durango. “One of the greatest compliments we have received from a customer is when Bryan Hondru said, ‘Given the design, location and schedule of the project, no one else could have done what you did,’” Edgewood’s president, Brian Schafer-Vinson, relates.

	Bryan salvaged the petrified root of the tree that Chad Haspells had carved into a bear, then skinned the root down to the subcutaneous orange mottled bark and sealed it with polyurethane for the front entry. The limestone see-through fireplace divides the entryway and the great room. Coppers Mine slate flooring sets the tone for the home’s many copper inclusions.
Joe recommended Dyerbilt Construction Inc., run by Terry Dyer and his son, Troy, as the general contractor. Even before construction could begin, a 1,300-foot-long driveway had to be blasted out of the side of a cliff. The stone was set aside and used in creating the landscaping.The first phase of the project was to build a garage with a 999-square-foot guest cabin on the second story that included a living room, dining room-kitchen, two bedrooms and a bath. It gave Joyce and Bryan a place to stay during visits to check on construction of the home and provided for “knock-out” access from the guesthouse to the second floor of the main home.Construction began on the 5,500-square-foot main home, which, like the garage-guesthouse, features hand-peeled, chinked Engelmann spruce logs. “Even for the size of home that it is, it is cozy,” Joyce says. “Every section becomes a conversation area.”The main home consists of a foyer, great room with bar area and wine cellar under the staircase, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom suite with a cedar walk-in closet, powder room, storage room for skis and snow shoes, media room, laundry and mudroom on the first floor. At the top of the staircase is the pool room in the open loft. Two large bedroom suites accommodate guests. One is decorated for a cowboy look; the second features a Victorian motif. An office and an exercise room lead to the entry of the guest cabin. “From the time we turned the first spoonful of dirt until we were able to move in, only 12 months had elapsed,” Bryan recalls, crediting Terry Dyer for orchestrating fast turnaround.Joyce enlisted Carol Madeen of Madeen Interior Design in Durango to help her create a “Lodgey Victorian” style. Bryan and Joyce did much of the actual furniture shopping, but when they found a piece they wanted, they contacted Carol to purchase it for them.In addition to a wood-burning fireplace in the great room, the log home is equipped with two large antique nickel-plated wood stoves, one in the pool room and the other, “Happy Homes,” is found in the master bedroom. Two forced-air furnaces and air conditioning systems, fueled by natural gas, feature seven separate heating and cooling zones that assure year-round comfort. The Hondrus decided against in-floor radiant heat because such a system responds too slowly to fluctuating outside temperatures in the Durango region. \| Log Homes Illustrated SEPT 2006 \|