I’m excited to share some finished photo’s of a house I recently wrapped up! This is a beautiful little 1950’s ranch house located in Denver’s Crestmoor neighborhood – an area filled with large trees and big yards. Like many Denver neighborhoods, smaller, period homes co-exist here with supersized homes that are either new builds or over-sized pop-tops. This project wasn’t about doubling the home’s size – but about maximizing the space that was already there. (I’ve posted a series of in-progress renovation stories about this under 2,000 square foot home if you want to catch up on the house: the First Renovation Story and the Second Renovation Story.)
Here’s a before photo of the dining room and kitchen. The room beyond was an addition by a former homeowner who enclosed the back porch and added a very welcome family room to the home but did not address the fact that the kitchen and the dining room had no exterior windows.
The steel beam, needed for support, was encased in alder and stained to match the darkest parts of the floor. We added a full light door to the side yard that helps bring in additional light to the kitchen as well as two new skylights which really transform the space with natural light.
The custom kitchen cabinets, Colorado-made by a local cabinet company, Oak Tree Classic Woodworks out of Sterling Colorado, are a combination of Noir and Designer White by Pratt & Lambert. Noir looks almost black on the color chip but really is a gorgeous navy blue. The walls are Gray Owl by Benjamin Moore which I’ve found to be a really delightful blue-gray-green that subtly changes in hue depending on the light. There’s a life to it that I like in a paint color. The counters are Caesarstone’s Organic White.
We sacrificed about 3 upper cabinets when we removed the wall between the dining room and kitchen. To help with the loss, we created a china cabinet for the end piece next to the dining room. It’s all navy blue with glass shelves and little furniture feet – it’s cute and functional, looks great from the family room and “ends” the kitchen well. When you do two-toned kitchens – it’s important to determine where you will bring the lower cabinet color up. It’s something that unifies the two finishes and helps the kitchen look designed and not accidental. I did a few color studies for the client first so that we could understand how it would all work together.
We replaced the carpeting in the family room with hardwood and then had the rest of the home’s floors refinished to match. In addition to the two new skylights, we moved the exterior door opening down (it was right next to the fireplace) to help with foot traffic in and out from the backyard. The fireplace’s patterned tile is from Merola Tile and is called Twenties Petal – it’s a fantastic pattern that adds some graphic punch to the space. We painted the previously peach ceiling Decorator’s White by Benjamin Moore.
The walls in the powder room are Gray Owl like the rest of the living space in the home. We used the patterned fireplace tile for the flooring and Arizona Tile’s H-Line Series subway tile in Cotton Glossy with gray grout for the shower walls.
This small house renovation was a delight to work on – the project transformed the way the family lives in the home and I find that incredibly rewarding. The clients were calm and open to new ideas throughout the entire renovation process which was also somewhat extraordinary. Here’s to loving the house you have!
The Colorado Nest 
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