When Denver homeowners start planning a major historic renovation, one of the first questions is who to hire first: an architect, an interior designer, a general contractor or a design-build firm. There's a more important question to answer before that one: who is...
A few years ago, in an 1889 Victorian, I removed the kitchen fireplace. I want to lead with that because it tells you more about how I actually work than any list of services could. The fireplace was original. It was also sitting in the middle of the one room in the...
There is a strange idea that sometimes comes with owning an old house: that respecting its history means preserving everything exactly as it was. It doesn't work that way, and treating it like it does usually does the house a disservice. A home built in 1889 was...
If you read Part 1, you know what this bathroom became. What you don’t know is what it took to get there. This is the part that doesn’t make the reveal photos — the decisions, the pivots, the trades that are harder and harder to find, and the work that happened before...
A Victorian kitchen renovation that feels original to the house doesn't announce itself, and that's the point. It doesn't have a moment where you walk in and register that something dramatic happened here — no before-and-after reveal energy, no design feature reaching...
There is a particular quality of clarity that comes from a room stripped to its studs — not emptiness exactly, but honesty. You can see how the house was built and what decisions were made along the way, which ones were careful and which ones were expedient, which...
The biggest surprise for most homeowners isn't the cost of finishes. It's what happens when walls are opened and a century of previous decisions are revealed. Knob-and-tube wiring that someone once extended with romex and electrical tape. A drain line running through...
This Victorian home renovation began with understanding why the additions never quite belonged. An 1889 Victorian home in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood had everything going for it — ten-foot ceilings, intact millwork, and a layout that still largely made...
Historic home renovation in Denver · Kitchen design There's a moment in every renovation when the room stops being a project and starts being a place. In this kitchen it happened somewhere between the first morning I sat at the island with coffee — made with actual...
The Build: What It Actually Takes to Renovate a 1911 Kitchen There is a version of a kitchen renovation that exists in renderings — clean lines, finishes selected, everything in its place. And then there is the version that exists before that one, where the walls are...