A Big Kid's Tree House

Shopping for a Home with Ernie Graham
A Big Kid's Tree House

Upstairs again Graham, smiling like he has a great secret, opens the door to a bedroom located on the same level as the entry. This room is for a guest or parent for whom the altitude is a challenge, he says. To reach the bedroom from the entry they don’t have to walk up or down stairs, and the room is a short half-flight of stairs from the living area and kitchen.

The powder room is another of the house’s small, but important, details. Located to the side of the entry, not off the living room, the room is private, Graham points out. With a door to the sundeck, it also accommodates

modest hot tub bathers, who after leaving the hot tub want to step into a shower to rinse off. The powder room has that shower, as well as hooks for towels and robes.

One problem the design team encountered seemed to pull in nearly everyone on the job site. One of the downstairs closets had a 20-foot ceiling. What to do with that extra space, Graham and Wright asked themselves.

Always looking for a way to make sweet out of sour, they noticed the top of the closet was behind the built-in bookshelves in the living room. Ah haa. Build a fake ceiling in the closet and a secret door in the bookshelves. Graham opens the door with a twinkle in his eye and I peer in. If I were a kid, with blankets from the bunk beds and cushions from the sofa, I could make the perfect fort.

Though consideration of the use of the room went through several incarnations – someone called it a panic room ("But why panic? We are in Telluride."), others said it was a safe room for valuables – the crew settled on a fort for kids as the "highest and best use," said Graham.

Up the main stairs to a closed door, Graham, his hand on the knob, pauses for a moment, then opens the door with fanfare.

The room does have great views, its own fireplace and his and her lavatories. The shower and bath, built on the northeast corner of the house, however, are the crown jewels. The shower, with its double showerheads and glass shelves spaced perfectly so a bottle of shampoo fits, Graham points out, has glass walls. Bathers can look through the glass and through the windows to the San Sophia Ridge; their privacy is protected by the aspen woodlands to the east. Still recovering from the broken leg when he designed the house, Graham made sure the shower had the perfect size bench for sitting and showering.

Whether fussing with details or addressing each obstacle as it arose, building this house has been a huge project. Has he slowed down any? Since breaking his leg and his emergency room realization that "it takes as much time to get out of bad habits as it does to get into them," Graham says, "I work hard and play hard."

In between starting his own real estate business with Salamon, Telluride360 Real Estate, and building the Treehouse, he says he really has found more time to play. Recently he and his family rode the narrow gauge train from Durango to Silverton and took a trip to Santa Fe. Graham also did the sound for the Telluride Repertory Theatre’s performance this summer of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

"We are just a couple of guys who have an overwhelming attention to detail," he said.

"I am not an ex- Olympic skier. I am a recovering workaholic. Mike is a good influence on me. He goes out and plays tennis in the middle of the day. It takes patience and time to unwind bad habits."

Somehow the process of building the house, of paying attention to the details and of yielding to problems as they arise has made its own healing impression on Graham.

"I am a Republican who sees an acupuncturist," he says. "I have come to realize it is not about overwhelming the situation and controlling your environment. It is about going with the flow."