News | advice | area guide

This Gorgeous Montana Home Is Made From Pieces of a Gold Mine!

A buyer can literally strike gold in Montana for $5.95 million. A modern riverfront home near Big Sky, MT, was constructed with elements brought in from a nearby gold mine.

There isn’t any gold dust wafting around, but there are priceless beams on the ceiling and the old tin roof reclaimed from the mine. Oh, and some of the floors are from an old dance hall in Deer Lodge, MT.

“I kind of like having a story behind everything,” says the owner/listing agent Scott Altman, who also built the house.

Altman bought the 23.33-acre property along the Gallatin River in 2007, and started building the home, near the world-famous Big Sky ski resort.

And when his builder heard that they were taking the nearby defunct Gold Coin Mine apart, Altman bought most of what was disassembled.

In addition to using the beams and metal roofing, they cut off the face of one of the rock crushers and used it as a fireplace, and used old bolts and chains for the mantel.

Then they took the crankshafts from those crushers, erected them vertically, capped them with another old beam, and formed a clever entry gate to the property.

They also repurposed the old rails the ore carts used for handrails on the stairs that lead down to the wine cellar.

Oh, and then they welded a valve and pipe over a Kohler top-fall faucet that fills the tub in the master bath, so it looks as if the water is falling down from an old mine pipe in the ceiling.

The plan was for the Altman family to head for this gold-flecked retreat as soon as their youngest son graduated high school. That’s what they did, finishing and moving into the four-bedroom, 4.5-bath house in 2009.

They also outfitted the 5,398-square-foot house with special features, like a pizza oven in the chef’s kitchen (Altman’s family is Italian), a 480-square-foot deck overlooking the water, a family room with an old-timey miners’ bar, and the aforementioned wine cellar, accessed via trap door.

Then there’s the gigantic mudroom/gear room/laundry room, crucial in this location. “With all the rafting, hiking, biking, rock climbing, fishing, etc., that you do around here, you realize you need a lot of space for gear,” says Altman.

Now, about a decade later, the house isn’t as filled with visitors as it used to be. The Altmans have taken to traveling the country in their Airstream, and Scott says that when they come home, their mine house on the river just feels “too darn big.”

So it’s time to downsize, although the Altmans have every intention of staying in the Big Sky area.

“We’ve gotten a lot of interest from people who want to use it as a generational compound,” says Altman. It’s easy to see how the property could be ideal for a century or two—or for a celebrity in search of a little pristine privacy.

The post This Gorgeous Montana Home Is Made From Pieces of a Gold Mine! appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

Source: Real Estate News and Advice – realtor.com » Real Estate News