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.

★

Hot design

Damn. It's hot in Japan. It's high summer up here on the north coast now. And it's humid. And I don't like it. Summer was my least favorite season before I got here. But it's reason to switch it up and make the house slightly more comfortable. I mean, as much as I can with only one dinky air conditioning unit for an entire house that has no insulation.

In my last living room post the space was pushing the warm factor because, uh, I still got trauma from winter. But now I've scaled back on textures and stuff in general to create the cool, breezy illusion I'm chasing. You know, the one where I sit under the a/c and blithely deny global warming.

Okay, the shag rug remains because the dogs love it and yeah they rule my life. Also, Japanese homes don't have dining areas so, um, we sit on the floor and use the coffee table. Whether that makes me white trash notwithstanding, I refuse to sit directly on a hard floor. It hurts like a motherfucker – you try it. The rug stays.

So if you haven't yet and you're melting out there this summer, ditch the heavy stuff in your space. Clutter, warm colors, furry textures, that sort of thing. Try cooler and lighter colors, fabrics like linen and cotton, and a glass vase with simple green leaves.

It helps me deal with summer heat but maybe I'm mental and you think it's all bullshit. Your call. I'm going to make sangria now.

★

This Japanese House: The Living Room

I know, I know. Several months later, post teaser shots. The Japanese have a few things down like sliding doors, entry rooms, and small appliances. Otherwise, think utility. Think tight spaces and anti-flow. Think giant fluorescent overhead light fixtures. Think gadgets everywhere you look. Think low-budget suburbia.

When we arrived the rental house looked like this. The living area is open to the galley kitchen and check out those floral curtains to match the sweet ass mauve kitchen cabinets. Not at all what I'd expect from Japan. I know better now.

Nothing to get excited about here, it's just orange-brown pergo flooring in the living area and kitchen. It's darker brown (and slightly better) almost everywhere else, which makes no sense. But very little about my Japanese house makes sense to me.

Bringing two big dogs with us really limited our housing choices. My husband's staff found only four options and this was the one house NOT boxed in by other houses on all four sides. And when I say boxed in, I mean it. More on that later.

Anyway. This is the house we chose and I'm calling the living room done. For now.

It only took several hundred trips to Muji and a few sizable online orders from Yoyo Market for Ikea loot. The room is small and awkward just like most residential space in Japan. That's right, it's not all perfect design and simple modern/wabi-sabi living here like you see on blogs and in magazines. This room in particular feels modular, though it's not. Maybe because it completely lacks insulation. But it does have a pitched ceiling, and for that I am grateful.

I spent most of the arctic winter in this one room, so I made it feel warmer (even if it wasn't) with textures. The Muji sofa also helped – we opted for the down cushions.

Sources: Muji coffee table, Oskar chair from Room & Board, faux fur throw from Restoration Hardware (covering the ugly kerosine heater in the corner), and the rug, sheepskin, floor lamp and pillow are from Ikea.

Window covering setup is all from Ikea, bar stools from Overstock. I pulled the rusty but solid old metal bookshelf from the scary outdoor shed – it's perfectly juxtaposed with the stupidly overpriced Bang & Olufsen telly, no?

The room has too many windows including two large exterior sliding glass doors. Light is not the worst thing to have in abundance but furniture placement is challenging. I did what I could, you can't ever have too much light. Or can you? Suggestions welcome.

★

Teaser Shots: My Dope New Living Room in Japan

Tür 8

I lived in Vienna for three years in a 1-bedroom apartment in an old building in the 18th district. Sorry I can't find better photos. We bought most of our furniture from a Swiss store called Interio. Scope their most recent catalogue.

The round chair is a Stokke Planet. I'm not too fond of the taupey color of it now and tried to find it stateside for a new cover. No such luck.

I love this bed but unfortunately it doesn't fit in any of the small rooms in our house now. It's now in many pieces, in storage somewhere. Sold it on Craigslist!



Not a great shot but the bookshelf is the Chaos by Georg Doblhammer. It's a bit of an engineering marvel, but that doesn't change the fact that I want to burn it every time we take it apart and put it back together.

Just sold these chairs on Craigslist!
 

This was the 'hood. Aumanplatz. That was our streetcar, the 41 line.