Whitefish Home to be Showcased in Upcoming HGTV Dream Home Giveaway

As project managers at Malmquist Construction were fielding calls from a Tennessee firm claiming to be interested in developing spec homes in the Whitefish area, Kevin Richardson of Timber Forge Design was having identical conversations with the same mystery company.

It turns out that other local contractors and architects were also receiving the phone calls as part of a vetting and selection process, unbeknownst to them, to whittle down a build-and-design team to construct the centerpiece home for HGTV’s largest-ever Dream House Giveaway.

The spec-home guise foreshadowed the secretiveness of the building process after Timber Forge and Malmquist were selected to head up the project, along with HGTV Dream Home interior designer Brian Patrick Flynn. Malmquist’s Bear Barinowski and Tyler Frank, along with Richardson, had to sign non-disclosure agreements to keep the project under wraps until HGTV was ready to announce the giveaway.

“It was tough having to tell (subcontractors) that we really need you here and we really need to get this done on this schedule without being able to tell them why,” Frank said.

Still, Barinowski, Frank, Richardson and Flynn were able to shepherd the project through an impressively swift timeline of under six months, start to finish, from mid-February to August of this year, undeterred by enormous amounts of snow, harsh winter conditions and other “dynamic challenges,” including hammering through substantial rock during excavation.

Crews cleared huge piles of snow from the location, along Elk Highlands Drive on Big Mountain, and remnants of snow still lingered at the edge of the construction site in August. Roughly 200 people worked on the project altogether, often with specialists such as plumbers and electricians onsite simultaneously, which isn’t typically the case.

“It was like an anthill up here,” Barinowski said. “People were on top of each other. The guys who worked on this house were amazing.”

Barinowski praised Flynn’s thoughtfulness and approach to collaboration, as well as the generally collaborative environment HGTV fostered.

“The goal was to make everyone succeed and for this to be successful,” Barinowski said. “We had a really good time working on this house. It was a lot of fun. It exceeded all of our expectations,”

Flynn returned the praise to Frank, Barinowski and Richardson, noting their expertise, diligence and capacity to creatively adapt.

“It’s the first time I’ve worked on a project that started ahead of schedule and stayed ahead of schedule,” he said.

The result is a striking, thoughtfully designed 3,650-square-foot home laden with creative flourishes and offering second-to-none views of Whitefish Lake. The “mountain modern” home was constructed with top-of-the-line materials, including locally sourced reclaimed wood. It comes fully furnished, with Flynn masterminding the interior’s customized bravado. For a number of accouterments, Flynn scoured Kalispell antique stores.

The HGTV Dream Home Giveaway bills itself as “one of the most successful consumer promotions in cable TV history.” The Elk Highlands home will be the centerpiece of the 2019 package, the network’s biggest ever since launching the giveaway promotion in 1997, worth $2.3 million when factoring in a 2019 Honda Pilot Elite and $250,000 from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

Live stationed cameras and cameramen documented the construction process, and viewers can catch the DIY Behind the Build: HGTV Dream Home 2019 special on Dec. 29 at 9 p.m. MST, as well as the HGTV Dream Home 2019 Special on Jan. 1 at 6 p.m. MST. Both shows air on HGTV.

The official entry period for the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway 2019 begins Dec. 28 and runs through Feb. 18, 2019. Eligible viewers can visit www.HGTV.com for full details and official rules, and get a sneak peek and more information about the home at www.HGTV.com/HGTVDreamHome.