Far from your average spec house, this stylish and fun Martis Camp home perfectly suits the lifestyle of its new owners

The great room showcases the exterior parts of the home the project team brought inside, including vertical cedar T&G and granite

It’s hard for a house to stand out in Martis Camp, where every dwelling that occupies a lot makes an architectural statement on the land. But when Daniel Fraiman commissioned Scott Gillespie of SANDBOX Studio and interior designer Rachel Wright to help bring a spec project to life, the intent was to create something not found anywhere else in the exclusive private community.

“I tried to envision a house that I would want to live in,” says Fraiman, owner and president of Truckee’s Daniel Fraiman Construction (DFC), which has built some 100 houses in the greater Tahoe area. “Of course, I designed it to be a completely family-friendly house, a place that a young family could live in and grow into. But I’m also a very playful person, and having a playful home where a family can have fun together was hugely important to me.”

Apart from the architectural style and finishes that he hoped to realize, Fraiman wanted to build a house that would be “fun, approachable, warm, playful and livable”—a lot of directives, certainly, but all of which were ultimately realized. So much so that the owners moved in the same day the home sale closed, with their new mountain residence fully furnished inside and out, down to the towels on the bathroom racks and sheets on the bed. 

A water feature flows under the home toward the backyard

“None of the furnishings were staged for effect,” Fraiman says. “Every piece was bought with the intention that the homeowner would want to live with it. We wanted to create a strong emotional response the moment someone walked in.”  

The project team spent considerable time working out the details on this six-bedroom home that appears to gracefully vault across its 1.6-acre site. As Gillespie says: “This one has a lot of bells and whistles, every one of which works perfectly. What’s unique about Martis Camp’s design guidelines is that they are robust, but not style-specific, or too confining.” 

While the expansive homes in the community vary from contemporary to rustic, this residence embodies a subtle blending of styles and motifs. With its rhythm of restrained gables, particularly evident at the rear, multi-paned transoms set above larger glazed openings, deep eaves, use of western red cedar and intimate recesses, the house references the California Craftsman style typically seen in the northern parts of the state. 

“Much of the house is akin to California Craftsman residences, but we gave ours a mountain flair that really makes it stand out on its own,” Gillespie says.

In keeping with Fraiman’s original desire to build a house that is fun for its occupants, Wright and Gillespie filled the exteriors and interiors with elements meant to amuse while fostering lasting family memories. Costa, owner and principal of Truckee’s Moxie Design Studio, selected all the furnishings and accessories, while Wright’s departure point for her interior design elements—everything from the wood ceilings and cabinetry to the lighting, countertops, natural stone slabs, fireplace surrounds and hardwood flooring—was the outdoor swimming pool.

“When Dan first hired me, he explained the concept of the backyard pool designed to look like a pond,” says Wright, who was a DFC employee at the time. “With that natural element in mind, everything had to feel organic and textural. Just as the pool looks like a natural element on the land, I, too, wished for everything inside to have that same kind of texture and organic quality.”

The pool in the backyard was designed to resemble a pond complete with boulders

As someone who calls herself a “geology nerd,” Wright uses many natural stone slab pieces, examining the veining to determine how to piece slabs together so they could bookmatch creatively. Here, she created such startling interior architectural elements as a floating granite fireplace hearth, the primary bedroom’s spectacular fireplace wall and a floating slab vanity in the main bath.   

“I wanted every room in this house to have texture, whether it was leathered basalt, split marble, carved limestone or ‘leathered’ quartzite on a fireplace,” Wright says.

To further emphasize her penchant for tactility, Wright had the kitchen cabinetry, made of a light alder wood, wire-brushed for an added visual dynamic. She chose a ceiling lighting source for the main seating area of the great room composed of rectangular shards of slate that she describes as being “very shaley, like you find in the hiking areas around Truckee and Tahoe.” As a counterpoint to that accessory, over the kitchen island, she hung a lighting source composed of a galaxy of clear glass globes. Such distinctive lighting sources are not only practical and sculptural elements in a vaulted space, they also visually work to lower the height of the spaces, making the rooms below feel more intimate. 

The kitchen boasts textured wire-brushed cabinetry uppers with a two-toned champagne iron hood, along with granite stone framing the window view and solid surface quartzite adorning the range wall

As for other “bells and whistles” inside the home, the design team configured a novel wine rack, visible upon entering the house. What had once been designated as a coat closet on the original blueprints for the house was transformed instead into a floor-to-ceiling, all-glass wine rack, through which one sees into the kitchen. 

Elsewhere, steps that lead into a sunken tub in a guest bath are equipped with LED lights, while in bedrooms, Wright designed floating consoles made of walnut. “I don’t like too many furnishings that touch the floor,” she says. “It’s sometimes difficult to clean around them, and something that appears to float takes up less visual space in a room.” 

When conceiving the home’s design, Gillespie, in close concert with Fraiman, checked off in his mind the imperatives for this, and every project of his, especially when designing in Martis Camp. 

“The things that are of primary importance to clients is that their secondary home be a gathering place for family and friends,” Gillespie says. “It’s that basic: having the accommodations and a variety of entertaining spaces.” 

The horizontal cedar backdrop of this game room bar was designed to balance the solid-plank stair treads that were mitered and wrapped around each tread and riser

The owners of this home can enjoy a swimming pool with a splash pad and the ability to turn into a giant hot tub with the flip of a switch, along with a 600-square-foot golf simulator tucked under the primary suite, complete with an undulating putting green. 

“Another goal is to capture views, to site the house in such a way that vistas are maximized,” says Gillespie, who designed hallways and stairways and glass bridge areas so the mountain landscape remains visible. “You can be anywhere in this house, day or night, and be able to experience the natural beauty beyond. It’s always there.”

The pond-like pool with boulders is augmented by a water feature that works its way around the property.  

“The reflection of the light from the water plays onto exterior surfaces and on to the ceilings inside,” says Fraiman. And as the water courses beneath the house at certain points, it feels as if “a river is running right through it,” he adds.

The lot itself proved somewhat challenging given its downward slope and the fact that there were houses directly below, meaning that sightlines needed to be accommodated with extra care. “Let’s just say that the land there is certainly not flat,” says Fraiman. “It was more challenging to build there than not challenging. Scott and I spent quite a bit of time reshaping the house as we went along.”

A covered outdoor cooking and dining station is among the home’s many gathering spaces

“Dan put a lot of trust in this project and in us,” says Gillespie. “There’s a general rule, maybe myth, out there that architects can have big egos. But that’s not how we collaborate. We have fun collaborating. Dan brought us the idea and we riffed and refined and created from that.”

Fraiman says seeing the owners enjoy their new mountain home brings him joy, knowing he and his project team achieved their primary goal. 

“It really fills my heart to see how the vision for this house was realized and how good design is working for them,” he says. “I love seeing people build and create memories and relationships in a home that we created for them.” 

Award: Mountain Elegance

Building Design: SANDBOX Studio

Builder: Daniel Fraiman Construction

Interior Design: Daniel Fraiman Construction; Moxie Design Studio

Landscape Design: NA

Square Feet: 6,233