Innholdsfortegnelse for February/March 2022 i 5280 Home

I often wonder how the brick bungalow I call home has shape-shifted throughout its century-long life. I’ve come up with a few theories: A window-walled nook in what’s now the main bedroom may have been a small sunroom at one point, and the current office space adjacent to the living room could have been a parlor decades ago. The electric-yellow paint I uncovered on walls in the main bathroom and kitchen certainly suggests that a previous owner had bold taste (a byproduct of the 1970s, perhaps?). Having this opportunity to ponder past iterations of older homes is one of the reasons I’m so fond of them. Each design quirk has a story. This Renovation Issue looks inside several recently updated homes, some of which are filled with historic context. “All…

1. A little love Mick Lindquist, who co-owns the home-renovation firm 5280 Exteriors, gave the 1892 home’s facade its fresh update using a black-and-white paint scheme (Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore and Tricorn Black from Sherwin-Williams). The Lindquists placed the oversize heart decal on the wall in the summer of 2020, during the height of the pandemic and racial-justice protests (many Denver marches started in nearby Cheesman Park), as a show of support. They loved the decal (and its sentiment) so much, they decided to keep it there permanently. 2. What’s old is new This oversize print is a photo taken by Mick’s outdoorsy grandfather, Mel Lindquist. Mick and Nell found a cache of hundreds of his photos (taken using a stereo realist camera) when they were living with Mick’s…

Architect Renée del Gaudio’s father, George, stood next to a giant granite rock outcropping on his wooded land in Boulder and told his daughter, “Here’s where I want to sleep. I want to go to bed with this rock right next to me.” And so, the enormous mass became the inspiration for the new home Renée designed for George on the 2.5-acre site, amid mature ponderosa pines and native grasses. Her father had another, even more important request, born of his long-standing philosophy about life. “He lives very simply and with minimal possessions,” Renée says. “It’s how he has always been. So I knew we’d design a house where nothing is redundant or excessive”—a key ideological starting point for a home that makes as small an environmental impact as possible.…

Paint: National nonprofit PaintCare recycles unwanted paint and operates a Colorado chapter. Visit paintcare. org to find a drop-off site near you. Mattress: Spring Back Colorado deconstructs mattresses and box springs and then reuses or recycles the parts. Schedule a pickup or locate a donation site at springbackco.org. Batteries, lightbulbs, plastic, Styrofoam, and more: For a small fee, local company the Happy Beetle picks up your hard-to-recycle stuff monthly or quarterly—as does national outfit Ridwell, which also operates in the Denver metro area. (Happy Beetle serves Boulder and Louisville as well.) Learn more at thehappybeetle.com and ridwell.com.…

For artist Wendy Talmon and her husband, Josh, the decision to purchase a neglected 1972 ranch with an overgrown lawn, rotting board-and-batten siding, and a dysfunctional layout was driven by the home’s one redeeming quality: its location. “The lot and the view are what did it for us, so we could see through all the ugly,” Wendy says of the 1.5-acre property in Boulder’s Fairview Estates, which offers sweeping views of the Flatirons. As a fiber artist who creates textural, handwoven wall hangings using natural materials (find her work at wandertree. com), Wendy knew she wanted to infuse her fixer-upper with a similar organic-modern feel. But before she could tackle the interior aesthetics, she had to address some serious structural changes. The couple tapped architect Joey Pruett, founder of Denver…

Over the last 15 years, Tran Wills has opened and operated an array of local businesses—from the nontoxic nail salon Base Coat (which closed its last location this past fall) to Fabric Lab clothing boutique to Super Ordinary art gallery—all with a common mission to promote inclusivity and transparency in retail. Her latest endeavor, Matriarch Mercantile, which recently opened in Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace, follows suit. Ninety-nine percent of the home goods, pantry items, gifts, and fashion accessories that Wills offers in the shop are created by women- and BIPOC-owned businesses. “I have always wanted to be representative in the retail world by carrying brands that are Asian-owned and Black-owned, Indigenous-owned and women-owned,” Wills says. Inside the small and serene boutique, shelves are stacked with products by makers from near and…

SKIP: Standard air vents CHOOSE: Smart vents BECAUSE: The new(ish) technology helps control the temperature in each room of your house: Automated air registers open and close to allow airflow to specific areas based on your pre-programmed preferences—so you’re not overheating or overcooling your whole home just to enjoy a space or two comfortably. Popular brands include Flair, Keen, and Ecovent. SKIP: Traditional faucets and showerheads CHOOSE: WaterSense bath fixtures BECAUSE: This EPA-sponsored program identifies products that use at least 20 percent less water than standard fixtures and work just as well. SKIP: Energy-guzzling appliances CHOOSE: Energy Star–certified versions BECAUSE: The gold standard for measuring energy-efficiency, the Energy Star label identifies products that can save you money and go easy on the environment. For example, an Energy Star–certified washing machine…

When Lexi Bohonnon bought her grandmother’s Observatory Park house in 2018, she had three goals in mind: Overhaul the space to jibe with her more modern lifestyle; incorporate her nuanced, varied tastes in a cohesive way; and pay homage to her grandmother, Barbara Boucher, who’d lived in the home for more than 30 years before moving just down the street. “I was excited to touch up the entire inside and have the house remain pretty unassuming on the outside,” says Bohonnon, who opened up the 2,000-square-foot ranch home’s compartmentalized interior, but left the “colonial-ish” exterior intact, including its clapboard siding and shutters. “And I definitely took design inspiration from my grandmother.” Once the updated floor plan was finalized (with help from Parkside Remodeling), Bohonnon brought on Kim Blankenburg and Molly…

If you logged onto Instagram in early spring 2021, you might have spotted a video of a pregnant Cait Pappas and her husband, Jason, standing in the garage of their suburban Arvada home, surrounded by enormous cardboard boxes. These contained custom kitchen cabinets that Cait designed and ordered from online retailer Cliq Studios, and the couple was giddy about them. They jokingly debated the terms of the damage-return policy (neither could remember the timeframe the company gave them) when suddenly they heard a clatter in a corner of the garage where their then-2-year-old son, Joe, was playing. There was laughter (Joe was fine; the cabinets were fine), and the video ended. This is one example of the controlled chaos associated with home renovations—particularly the DIY kind. And for Cait, a…

A collection of antique tools hangs above the entrance to a workroom inside Littleton’s Ackerman & Sons Furniture Workshop—and to owner Mike Ackerman, they tell a story that informs the company’s work restoring furnishings of all periods and styles. The tools originally belonged to Ackerman’s great-great-grandfather Balthazar, who emigrated from Luxembourg in the late 1800s, settling in Minnesota with only the clothes on his back and woodworking know-how. At his first job as a cleaner for the local undertaker, the industrious immigrant built a handsome walnut casket for his employer’s display window. “After that, nobody wanted to bury their loved ones in pine boxes, and our business was born—through the art of craftsmanship,” Ackerman says. Balthazar later opened a furniture shop with his earnings. Today, Ackerman is the fifth generation…