Friday, March 1, 2013

Fresh photos

Custom home in Montrose county!

Date: March 1, 2013

Scott Bridger
Bridger Construction Services
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Southwest Hearing is Starting Strong!

> Drilling caissons for the foundation. Montrose, CO.
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> > > > Scott Bridger
> Bridger Construction Services > Sent from my iPhone

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

SouthWest Hearing

> > > Ground breaking ceremony. >

> > >

> > > > Scott Bridger
> Bridger Construction Services > Sent from my iPhone

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North Dakota

Commercial sheds in North Dakota.

> >

> > >

> > > > Scott Bridger
> Bridger Construction Services > Sent from my iPhone

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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

You Don't Have To Crane Your Neck To See

Bridger Construction's Mountain Village Remodel Project
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> > This site is really breathtaking. Not a bad day at the office for the framers!
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> The addition will match the existing mountain home aesthetic and blend beautifully within the neighborhood of Adam's Ranch in Mountain Village.
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> > Telluride, Colorado is unparalleled in majesty. Mountain village sits just above the town and is home to the world class ski resort.
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> It is true that people come for the winters and stay for the summers!
> > > Scott Bridger
> Bridger Construction Services > Sent from my iPhone

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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Summer in Ridgway, CO

Hope summer is treating you well!

Sent from my iPhone

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Saturday, July 7, 2012

Watch Newspapers - Mountain Modest

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Mountain Modest

by Leslie Vreeland | Photos by Brett Schreckengost

Jan 24, 2012 | 511 views | 0

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Artful counters by Distinctive Concrete Designs’ Chris Bolane (from second from top); a three-quarter wall in the master bedroom makes room for the home’s one built-in closet; Bolane’s fireplace-countertop that extends into a corner seat.

Looking across to Mt. Sneffels; an awning, over the second-story deck, deflects late-in-the-day sun; a pop-out wall makes for more space in the kitchen, and a vivid blue detail on the exterior of the house.

When it comes to owning a dream home, some people have a vision, and push to see it through. For Chad Swenka and Amanda Hammond, it was the opposite. “We didn’t even know there was a dream,” Hammond says. More specifically, they didn’t think they could afford to buy property in Ouray County, much less build on it. That was two-and-a-half years ago. Today, here is their home: a contemporary, custom-designed two-story structure overlooking the piñon-and-juniper forest high above Ridgway State Park. The house’s land backs up to the 5,000-acre Billy Creek State Wildlife area, and overlooks the Sneffels Wilderness. The couple’s noisiest neighbors are a flock of migrating Sandhill cranes; soon after moving in, they were investigated by a bobcat, who scurried across the road near their property and then stopped to take a long look at them. “Just checking out the new neighbors, I suppose,” Swenka says. They’ve seen maybe 50 wild turkeys, a herd of 30 elk and even a mountain lion at various times since then, but the inquisitive bobcat has yet to return.

The story of how Swenka and Hammond made their home comes down to being open to what life places in your path – literally. They’d been living in Montrose, and pretty much planned on staying there. The reason was economics. “We knew we couldn’t afford to live in Ridgway, and we knew we couldn’t afford Log Hill,” Hammond says. As a result, building a home in the area “wasn’t something we’d even considered.” Yet Hammond, a public defender, and Swenka, a software engineer, are avid hikers, bikers and climbers, so they often spend weekends in the San Juans. One day, on a trail above Ridgway, they came upon a gorgeous property for sale. When they got home, Hammond began looking into what real estate in the region was going for, and got a shock. “Prices were surprisingly affordable,” she says, “and we realized, ‘this is actually doable.’ That’s when the wheels started turning.”

The first order of business was to find a lot. The couple knew what they wanted: to be able to hike and bike from the house was key. They also knew what they didn’t want: a tract house, and a lot of restrictive homeowners covenants. With the help of a realtor, they soon located what they thought didn’t exist – five acres in a piñon-and-juniper forest overlooking the Sneffels Range, but still only 30 minutes from their jobs in Montrose. Then they hit the internet – as they would do so often in the months ahead – to find a local architect and a builder who shared their vision: a “green,” modern mountain home – on a budget. Far from being daunted by the cost restrictions, the builder, Scott Bridger, and architect Liana Schmidt, both of Ridgway, embraced them. The couple’s priorities dovetailed with Schmidt’s and Bridger’s: they all placed a high value on building something efficient, streamlined and functional, focusing construction dollars “on their priorities, not just square footage for the sake of extravagance,” as Bridger puts it. Liana Schmidt says it more simply. “It’s fun to work with less,” she says. “It makes you focus on what’s really important. We understood each other, and we all just clicked.” Which was good, because there was a lot of work to do.

The first challenge was the lot. Hammond and Swenka now owned five acres, but much of it straddled a steep ravine. That left a very small spot on which the house could perch – on the tall side of the ravine – in order to have a view. “There was absolutely nothing flat on the entire five acres,” Scott Bridger recalls. Forty dump trucks’ worth of dirt had to be poured to shore up the foundation before excavation could begin. The footprint that was left to build on was “like a boxcar,” Hammond says. “We were definitely limited by the rectangular shape.” And there was another problem: while the Sneffels range was, theoretically, “in view,” the house would need to sit up at just the right height for its owners to see the peaks. Which meant some part of it would have to be tall. Scott Bridger pulled a ladder inside one day, for Swenka to climb up on. Here, Bridger said, is where we need the second floor to begin, so you can see Mt. Sneffels. Which meant the ceiling of the first floor would have to be 11 feet high.

Swenka and Hammond were not only amenable to this idea, they understood completely, and were all for making this and other necessary design compromises that needed to be made along the way. For example, Hammond hoped to have a powder room on the first floor. There wasn’t enough space for a separate bathroom, so Schmidt combined it with the master bath. A sliding door separates the bathroom facilities from a walk-in shower, allowing for two uses at the same time. Another way Schmidt economized on space was to install the home’s only built-in closet in the master bedroom, which sits behind a three-quarter wall, just 8 feet long and 3 feet wide. “That’s totally OK,” Hammond says. “We both hate clutter anyway, and the space forces us to be honest about what we really need.” Schmidt employed other techniques to make the 2,300 square-foot home feel spacious and accommodating. The three-quarter wall, a design she also used in the living room, maximized airflow and created visual interest. There wasn’t enough room for a formal dining room, so Schmidt inserted a “pop-out” wall in the kitchen. The pop-out was not part of the original footprint, but it added enough space to define the dining area and create the feel of a separate dining room. She did the same thing in the upstairs office.

The architect also brought in light, through strategically placed, elongated windows in nearly every spot the walls would allow. She even let the starlight in, through a three-by-six-foot window that seems to float above the couple’s bed. “I believe anywhere you can create visual interest with a window is good,” Schmidt says. “It doesn’t have to be facing the trees or the mountains.” Another deft aesthetic touch is a deck – upstairs, where the big view is, facing south to the San Juans – that runs the length of the south side of the house. The living room doors, opening straight out to the deck, showcase the peaks. The deck sits high above the ground; a traditional design could have required extremely tall posts to hold it up. Instead, the architect designed steel support columns, which angled down and back to the foundation. With nothing visible to hold it up, the deck appears to float above the trees, as if suspended in space.

Of course, the goal was not only a stylish home, but to keep the design as ecologically friendly as possible. The start-up costs of traditio

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

MARK FISCHER POETRY PRIZE 2012 | Telluride Inside… and Out

Banner photographs courtesy Jennifer Koskinen; TIO logo courtesy Jodie Shike and Jennifer Koskinen

MARK FISCHER POETRY PRIZE 2012

Written on May 27, 2012 by Susan Viebrock in Featured-1

Do you know what a “squibble” is? Don’t try looking it up. “Squibble” is not in the dictionary. It’s a made-up word Mark Fischer used to describe his rather esoteric (read: eccentric) brand of poetry that was a Rorschach for his Energizer Bunny kind of mind.

You see, Mark Fischer was no ordinary man. The Yale, Harvard, Stanford-educated lawyer – he covered all the ivy bases there, no? – practiced law in Telluride in the 1980s, but he also loved to ski and hike. He was a glider pilot, who played the flute, and Yoga master, who wrote a book on the subject. Mark Fischer spoke five languages fluently and translated philosophical treatises from German, Latin, and Greek into English. And then, in his spare time, he wrote squibbles.

Mark’s widow, now county commissioner and artist, Elaine Fischer (and clearly no slouch in the talent department her own self) described her husband this way:

“Mark was the hippie itinerant scholar and I was the young artist who followed him to town,” she explains.

Telluride Arts’ Mark Fischer Poetry Prize was started by Talking Gourds Brand Poohbah/county commissioner Art Goodtimes in 1997 to honor Mark’s memory. It is sustained by Elaine and the Fischer family. The 14th annual Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, produced by Telluride Arts, takes place Thursday, May 31, 6 p.m., The Steaming Bean.

Prizes are awarded to the entries that best exhibit the qualities of originality, novelty, complex meaning, linguistic skill and wit. The wilder the better. Last year’s winner is this year’s judge: Kierstin Bridger, whose street cred for the daunting job is well established.

Kierstin holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Washington and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Pacific University in Oregon. Her poetry can be found online at the Copperfield Review, Thrush Literary Journal, OccuPoetry, Telluride Watch, and The Mountain Gazette. She has forthcoming award winning poetry in the June issue of Memoir (and). She was a finalist for 2011 Haiku Year in Review by Broadsided Press. Her short fiction can be found in “The Porter Gulch Review,” Smith magazine’s “6 Words about Work, “Bricolage, Stripped: A Collection of Anonymous Flash Fiction” edited by Nicole Monaghan, and at the best of Nail Polish Stories, a tiny and Colorful Literary Journal. Kierstin, we are proud to say, is also regular contributor to “Telluride Inside… and Out.”

From the 100s of poems submitted this year, Kierstin picks for the 2012 Prize – cue drumroll – are:

1st place: “Psalm 656,” Wayne Lee, Santa Fe
2nd place: “Apotheosis,” Julie Shavin, Colorado Springs
3rd place: “Failte Eire,” by Beth Paulson, Ouray
4th place: “Putting Away the Cutlery,” by Ellen Metrick, Norwood

Ellen Metrick is a local favorite. She is editor, journalist and photographer for The Norwood Post, teaches children’s theater at The Livery in Norwood, and is the current San Miguel County Poet Laureate. Ellen also teaches leads workshops around the region, sometimes co-facilitating with the county’s first poet laureate, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Her newest book is “Teasing out the Divine” (Mercury HeartLink, 2012), available at Between the Covers Bookstore in Telluride.

The Mark Fischer Poetry Prize: Miss America for Poets – minus the bathing suits and tiaras.

Now there’s a thought totally in line with Mark Fischer’s wonderfully twisted mind…

To learn more about Kierstin and how she went about selecting this years winners and honorable mentions, click the play button. For a teaser about what’s in store on Thursday night, listen to Ellen reading her winning poem.

http://www.tellurideinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/kierstin-bridger.mp3","loop":false,"autoRewind":true}" quality="high" width="320" />

Photo credits for Ellen Metrick images: Kit Hedman.

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MARK FISCHER POETRY PRIZE 2012 | Telluride Inside… and Out Scroll down and Listen to the interview!

Banner photographs courtesy Jennifer Koskinen; TIO logo courtesy Jodie Shike and Jennifer Koskinen

MARK FISCHER POETRY PRIZE 2012

Written on May 27, 2012 by Susan Viebrock in Featured-1

Mark’s widow, now county commissioner and artist, Elaine Fischer (and clearly no slouch in the talent department her own self) described her husband this way:

“Mark was the hippie itinerant scholar and I was the young artist who followed him to town,” she explains.

From the 100s of poems submitted this year, Kierstin picks for the 2012 Prize – cue drumroll – are:

The Mark Fischer Poetry Prize: Miss America for Poets – minus the bathing suits and tiaras.

Now there’s a thought totally in line with Mark Fischer’s wonderfully twisted mind…

http://www.tellurideinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/kierstin-bridger.mp3","loop":false,"autoRewind":true}" quality="high" width="320" />

Photo credits for Ellen Metrick images: Kit Hedman.

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There are no comments yet. Be the first and leave a response!

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Trout Creek Addition

Just past Ophir sits a quiet mountain lake retreat. Bridger Construction was just going to build a garage but then inspiration struck! After a full remodel it will be a house that will remain in the family for generations.