When Margaret Coblentz and Geoff Miller first met, they were on coinciding ski trips in California. The two shared a love of skiing, and, as it would turn out, a love of so much else. The two kept in touch after the ski trip, and, before too long, they were married and starting a family.
Though they lived in San Francisco, where they still keep a primary residence, the couple wanted to create another home that would allow them to keep skiing a part of their lives. The California mountains were an option, but with roots in the Midwest and Kentucky, they saw in Utah a place to build a ski retreat, but also a destination more readily accessible to their extended families. As Miller explains, “skiing is an important activity to us as a couple, but we also just love getting people together.”
The couple bought a fully furnished home in Deer Valley, but while they loved the area, the house’s traditional aesthetics didn’t feel quite right. So when a ski-in/ski-out lot came up for sale, the couple lunged at the opportunity. Though the parcel was empty, it wasn’t quite a blank slate. The property was part of a subdivision that came with a set of architectural plans that had already been approved and permitted. Still, they knew that together with their friend and owner of SVK Interior Design, Senalee Kapelevich, who had designed several interiors for them, including their San Francisco home, they could tailor it to make it just what they wanted.
“We came in with a clear sense of what we wanted the house to be and how we wanted it to feel,” says Miller. “We looked at a lot of mountain homes,” he says, “and there seemed to be two prevailing aesthetics: traditional Western on one hand, and extremely angular and cold on the other.” The homeowners wanted something in between—a home that made sense in its setting, but that was suited to their tastes. “California, but in the mountains,” as their designer Kapelevich puts it.
They also wanted a sense of refinement, but not one that would come at the expense of comfort. “We were interested in how the house lives; not just how it looks,” says Coblentz. Take the floors, for example. “We don’t wear shoes in the house, so how the floor feels in socks and bare feet was important,” explains Miller. For the material and installation, they used First, Last & Always, a San Francisco–based custom flooring company. “It’s so soft, and it doesn’t feel waxy,” says Miller. “It feels like a piece of sanded wood right out of the mill.”
