My Denver Bungalow

Let me start by saying I ADORE THIS HOUSE.

Almost four years ago I determined it was time to sell our Denver square (only ten blocks down the road from this house) because it was too big and fussy not really our deal. We'd renovated as much of it as we could afford, and because the neighborhood is stupid-popular now, it sold in three days. Huzzah!

Enter the bungalow.

Hold up, rewind. I live in Japan now and I'm renting out this house for the duration. Ideally I will live in it again someday and pick up where I left off with renovations. The sooner the better.

Anyway. This little bungalow. It just felt right. From the minute I walked in. It's small, about 1200 square feet, and it has character. Nothing mind-blowing, just subtle and comfortable and happy and it didn't stretch the budget. Crazy, right?

Stuff I wanted and got with this house:

+ solid 1920s build
+ small, compact space
+ dated kitchen I could renovate
+ dirtscaped backyard I could landscape
+ two-car garage
+ great hilltop location (with no 24-hour hipster yoga studio in my alley!)
+ major remodel potential – plans below

Stuff I didn't even know I wanted but got with this house:

+ insane rental income
+ a garden shed!
+ new roof (replaced as part of the sale)
+ good neighbors who aren't all up in my face and don't have shouty children

Stuff I wanted but didn't get with this house:

+ an entry of some kind
+ normal sized bedrooms
+ established trees/shade

Still, I had work to do. My husband had taken a job in Beijing but I wasn't about to go live there – are you kidding? I can't even drink the water in China without developing intestinal mayhem. I visited him, that was all the China I could handle. I wanted to fixate on the house anyway and then on the Vail studio loft and it all worked out perfectly. I took a boatload of mostly low quality iPhone photos while I was doing the work and since I can't multitask for shit, I'm going to write about it now just for posterity, and very much after the fact. I hope there's no rule against that in the blogger bible I have no intention of ever reading.

ANYWAY. Off the bat I refinished the original floors from that standard golden oak to a dark grayish-brown. I painted all the interior things white, of course.

Next up we planned a low-maintenance, low-water back yard with a landscape architect friend. The house being so small, I wanted to add serious livable outdoor space back there. It went from all dirt to all this:

Not everything went so well. The house had pathetic water pressure, which turned out to be very costly to repair and required digging up the entire front yard. And half the street. THEN the kickass new water pressure made the old water heater explode and flood the basement.

But I don't want to talk about that.

Eventually I got back to the fun stuff, namely the kitchen overhaul. I overshared about that here.

Someday I'll decide on that backsplash. Maybe.

A note about the spartan state of the house in these photos: These are the shots I use to advertise it as a rental. They work.

Here's the rest of the house. Not much to it!

The small awkward bedroom off the living area with a door to the bathroom.

Tiny Ikea bathroom renovated not-so-well by the previous owner. But it's cute and it works for now. (You're welcome for not taking a photo of the bathroom with the toilet seat up. I hate that! But probably because I'm mental.)

Small bedroom/office off the kitchen at the back of the house, overlooking the back yard. Yes, that's a $40 tanker desk and my ONLY killer craigslist find. Sorry but I'm not one of those bloggers.

A small part of the basement was also refinished by the previous owner. Again, it works for now.

I GOT PLANS! Of course I have plans. Because I need to obsess over stuff constantly.

+ vault ceilings in the living area, add skylights
+ install small, stand-alone Scandinavian woodburning stove
+ partially enclose porch with nano windows to create quasi-entry
+ utilize the back half of the attic for a sleeping loft/bedroom
+ renovate the existing bathroom
+ excavate basement and create a real laundry room, full bathroom, TV area, and bedroom
+ replace fence, update garage, plant more trees

You know, nothing much. And by the time I get all of that done, it'll be time to renovate the kitchen again.

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Craigslist Junkie

That's me. I'm rooting around on there all the time. Do I ever really score stuff? Once in a while. For example, my $40 tanker desk. Also my Vespa. And my car. I just got a nice little Macbook on there last week too. Otherwise Craigslist could be the biggest time-waster in my life. Not including my day job, that is.

So Denver is not exactly a design mecca. Imagine, if you will, boatloads of teal, oak, and brass for sale. You have to be patient, and persistent. Weed through other people's mistakes trying not to let it depress you. If you're really intent on something it will show up. Eventually. Unless it's a classic leather chesterfield and you live in a cow town, of course. But you must search often. As in every single day, and sometimes more than once. I know you're cool and unique, but there are always other people looking for the same thing. And they can be annoyingly adept at getting there before you do.

I don't know why but I'm much better at selling items on Craigslist than scoring stuff on there. Maybe I'm selling my stuff way too cheap. The trick is the right pricing, good pictures and information, and waiting it out. Unless you need cash right now just list it and forget about it. If your price isn't jacked up, someone will come along. They will probably lowball you, so determine the lowest you'll go ahead of time and try to stick to it.

One last thing. It's not just you, Craigslist transactions are ALWAYS awkward. As so astutely pointed out in this great post at The Brick House.

Tag Art

So yeah. This happened.

It's my garage. Access is in the back alley and there's a yoga studio, salon, and a popular bar all right there too. It seems my little gentrified neighborhood experiences echoes of its ghetto past at times. Not that I'm against tagging. Or ghettos. Or the past. As far as tags go, this really isn't too bad. In fact, I think with a little embellishment, it could be great. So I sent it to my graphic designer friend in California and here's what she sent back. I like it!

And no, we are not religious people.

So get this, I emailed the city's department of public works, filled out a form, and they deftly erased the tag from existence. Within 36 hours. Isn't it simply amazing how swiftly the city jumps into action for a freshly transformed white middle-class neighborhood? Ohhhh but don't get me started on the perils of gentrification because then I'll start shaming myself for being a hypocrite and, well, we can't have that.

Anyway, to the aspiring Denver street artist in search of a blank canvas: Feel free to use my extremely bland garage door (it's just asking for it anyway) but could I ask that you do something a little more along these lines? Then all of the hipster neighbors will think I'm even more edgy and cool.

Head First

We bought our brick foursquare in September 2007 after living in Austria for three years. My overachieving spouse was starting grad school and I was in need of employment. We still owned a rental apartment in Vail that needed to be fixed up before selling, and that would pay for the new house. In theory anyway.

For some reason that completely escapes me now, I thought it would be punkrock to own a historic Denver square. Location was crucial and we found it in one of the great old streetcar suburb on the Northside, now referred to by gentrifiers as West Highland. The boy commutes to the university by bike, and I wanted quick access to downtown via public transportation. It was now or never to buy our first stand-alone home. We probably overpaid for a turn-of-the-century house that had been quickly revamped by a shady DIY contractor. We were fresh off the boat, new to the city, and in a hurry. We jumped. Without knowing, at all, what we were in for. Dumbfucks.

Here's an advertisement similar to what the original owner probably used to build it.

Modern Home No. 52 from the Sears Modern Homes Mail Order Catalog

UPDATE: Sold it! Thank gawd. We did a ton of work to it (none of which I blogged about because I'm lame) but it reached a breaking point and started driving me batshit crazy. Too big, too much garden maintenance, an odd floor plan, and it never really felt right. The real estate market crashed just after we bought it so we were VERY fortunate to make a profit on it. Its location next to the shops at 32nd & Lowell sold it more than anything. Well, and my super cool decor styling apparently because there was a bidding war and it sold in three days. The winning buyers wanted to buy a bunch of our furniture and our garden stuff and some other odd things, and they wanted us to get the fuck out and QUICK. It was a bit creepy and their broker was an idiot bitch but whatever, they coughed up the cash and who the hell cares. I do hope they're happy with it. Here are all the real estate photos, check out those crazy over-saturated colors.

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This Is Not My Basement

I was going to start in about my latest project. That being the transformation of my scary serial killer basement into a nice clean and tidy storage space and/or cheerful laundry room. However, while downloading pictures I found one my boy took of a building down on Platte Street. His dissertation research involves wandering around ghetto parts of the city taking photos. So here's that instead. My basement endeavor shall remain a mystery for the moment. Happy long weekend.

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