Bevingtons at Brookside

Tyson Miller can do it all. Just ask his biggest fans.
Gary and Emily Bevington have had Miller do numerous remodeling projects on their home, and they trust him enough to give him the keys and leave on vacation while he’s at it.
“He’s very clean,” said Gary Bevington. He cleans up after himself completely, Bevington said. Many contractors don’t, he noted, but Miller is meticulous that way, and in the work he does. “He’s absolutely compulsive,” Bevington said. “He’s so careful, and clean.”
One project that exemplifies that care is a tile entryway the Bevingtons had Miller construct during last year’s respite from Missoula’s winter. Bevington had wanted a sand colored tile that matched the kitchen of the open floor plan in their Brookside home.
“This open plan was popular in the 90’s,” Bevington commented, and while it still looks contemporary, they wanted to delineate each individual space in the room a little more.
The kitchen is separated from the wide entry way by a long counter, and the living area has carpeting and couches, but the entryway needed a pick-me up.
Because the natural traffic flow follows from the front hall to the kitchen to the patio deck, and vice versa, Bevington wanted an easy-to-clean and durable surface, as it would get a lot of wear and tear. Tile fit the bill, especially as that was already what the kitchen had for its flooring.
But the color they had chosen was no longer available, something the couple didn’t know when they left town, leaving Miller to complete the job.
“He called us and said he couldn’t get that tile,” Gary Bevington remarked, “but he said he’d been looking at some design plans and had an idea for a transitional space between the kitchen and the patio. We trust him, so we said go ahead.”
When the couple returned from their trip, they found a new transition zone, with clay-colored tile that reflects the rust-brown stain of the patio deck, and also picks up the color variations in the kitchen tile.
“He said if you can’t use the same color, you should use something that picks up one of the accent colors in the original tile. That’s what this does,” Bevington said, pointing at the new space.
In addition, Miller laid the tile on point, in contrast to both the parallel lines of the decking and the traditional square layout of the kitchen floor. He also added an accent border between the kitchen and the newly designed space, mirroring the kitchen tile’s squares, but more-closely mimicking the new tile’s colors. The result is a perfect zone of movement, between the regularly-used deck and the kitchen not far within. The couple even placed a café table in the space, so they can sit indoors and gaze out at the landscaped area behind them from the new, warm space.
Intentionally or not, the tile also replicates another of the Bevintons’ loves: their home in the Yucatan of Mexico.
In the basement, the Bevingtons show off another of Miller’s creations.
“We have a lot of friends from Europe,” Bevington said, “and when they come to visit, they like to stay for a while.”
“The problem with long-term guests,” he added, “is food coordination. So I had the idea of putting in another kitchen.”


This, a fully-enclosed “junior” kitchen, remedies some of the problems of the open floorplan upstairs, Bevington said.
While he enjoys the look upstairs, Bevington ticked off numerous reasons an open kitchen plan is not ideal. Foremost is cooking smells. Bevington jokes he can come downstairs and make kimchee and no one would ever know. After admitting he doesn’t really create the hot, pickled cabbage dish, he does own up to cooking German sauerbraten, another smell he’d rather not have wafting through his living room. Nor even that of the fish he’s fond of grilling.
To minimize odors, Miller install a commercial exhaust fan designed for venting petroleum smells from gas stations. Miller did that work, plus all the wiring and plumbing on the kitchen as well.
“He can do everything,” Bevington said. That multi-talented ability is important to Bevington, who doesn’t want a bunch of subcontractors mucking about his home. Equally important is the ability to make the new space seem a part of the old.
“I wanted it not to look like an add-on,” Bevington said. And with Miller’s ability to match color and texture, it doesn’t. The walls, ceiling, and texture of the pre-existing finished parts of the basement all flow into what was, until he began its transformation into a kitchen, an unfinished, concrete-floored space that looked like, well, a basement.
After finishing the foundation work for the kitchen, Miller put in a floating laminate floor to reduce foot fatigue, had cupboards installed and selected a laminate countertop of bright marigold. “The countertop was Tyson’s idea,” Bevington said, letting on he probably wouldn’t have thought of that color. But in the windowless space, it adds light and a splash of fun, again reflecting the Bevingtons love of Mexico, which they have been visiting for endless years now.
The new kitchen will serve him well when he wants to cook foods too daunting for upstairs, and it will provide the perfect space for the couples’ numerous long-term guests. It will also be the food-preparation spot of choice once the Bevingtons complete their next project: a lower level entrance and patio off the basement living room. He plans to have Miller do that job, too. And he couldn’t be happier about that decision.