Renovating Denver – One House at a Time

Planning the Inside

So, yeah… we’ve been working with an architect since October on planning the inside. We’ve had so many different plans, I feel my head is spinning over the whole thing. I might be jinxing us, but I think we finally have a direction.

At first, we wanted to finish the currently unfinished attic space. We saw another home nearby with a finished master suite in the attic – bedroom, office, closet, bathroom. That sounded fantastic and we thought we could do the same, but we soon realized the space was not there. Our architect suggested we raise the 2 dormers on the home to get some more headroom in the attic. Although this sounded like an expensive option, we were wow-ed by the idea of a master suite. We went through with all the drawings for this and had it approved by the Landmark Commission (remember the home is in a historic district, so all exterior changes must first be approved by them). We thought they were the tough ones. Turns out it was the zoning committee that had the problem. They wanted us to wait until the middle of April to run the plans through the zoning board (it was the middle of January when we found this out). So, not being able to wait 3 months just to have the plans approved, we decided to rework our inside layout.

Turns out, we probably won’t be finishing the attic. We may pull some attic space above the master bedroom to vault the ceiling. We may keep the attic space for storage and add a pull down stair system to access it. But no bedrooms will be up there.

The second floor will have 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. We will pull space from one of the bedrooms to add the second bathroom (currently there is only 1 up there). This will allow us to create a master suite on this level.

Images to come …

Cool Old Things We Have Found During Demolition

During the demolition phase, we found lots of old stuff in the walls and ceilings. Tons of newspapers, the oldest dating back to the late 1800s… something in the headlines about the Spanish-American War!

1890s
We know the home was built in 1891 by the Fleming Brothers. One of them, Jessie E. Fleming, was also the first owner/occupant of the home in the late 1800s – early 1900s. We found some cool stuff from the 1890s, including these items that possibly belonged to Jessie Fleming. The first is a postcard advertisement for Chocolat Menier. The name “Jessie” is written in pencil on the back of the card.

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The singer booklet is small and has some additional inside pages with some great illustrations. These booklets were distributed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Perhaps Jessie attended?

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This is a piece of paper hand written in pencil. It’s dirty, and doesn’t look like much at first, but when you read it closely, it looks like a budget for a house. Listed are items such as: bricks, nails, windows, flooring, fence, mantel, stairs, lumber, paint, etc. We are assuming this is the original budget for this home! Wish I could build this today for $1400!

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1920s
In the 1920, Sarah A. Grant lived here. We think we found her eyeglasses case.

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1940s and 50s
Some work must have been done in the 40s or 50s. We found a can of Drano dating to 1941. Also the bottle of wine has a stamp on the back from 1952.

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Our plumber found this tag on one of the old pipes. It’s an inspection tag from the Plumbing Department of the City/County of Denver from 1946. Max Kreutz was the inspector.

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Let’s Get It Started, Yeah!

Finally the weather is cooperating! We have the permit to demo/rebuild the deck/porch. We also have a permit to demo the inside.

First we started with demo’ing the awning outside.

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Then, we started on the inside walls. Mike started in what was apartment 1. He knocked down the walls separating the bathroom and closet and removed the built in cabinetry. He also removed the kitchen cabinets and fixtures.

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We continued demo’ing walls on the main level. The last photo in the row below shows how we knocked down the wall separating the main floor from the basement level. A wall had been built cutting off the stairway down to the basement. A couple of knocks with the hammer and down it went.

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Demolition continued on the second floor. We pulled out some of the dropped ceilings. This exposed the attic! The first photo in the row below shows where we took down the wall/door separating the upstairs from the main stairway.

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Other Highlights:

We hired a plumber to start removing old pipes. We will eventually be replacing all the pipes with copper lines, they are currently galvanized steel (bad, bad!). He began by replacing the main shutoff valve for the house.

We have been finding some cool old wall paper under layers and layers of paint. This photo below shows a close up of some wall paper found in the kitchen of the upstairs apartment (#3)

We continue to find old newspapers, postcards and artifacts from different periods throughout the home’s existence. Photos and more info to come on that!

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Apartment 1 – Studio Apartment

Apartment 1 is accessible from the common hallway inside the front door. This apartment has a small living room with super styly brown laminate floors! The kitchen has a cool old Dixie stove.

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Apartment 2 – 1 BD Apartment

Apartment 2 is accessible from the common hallway inside the front door. This apartment has a living area, large kitchen, bathroom and bedroom (in the addition). The kitchen of this apartment will be the kitchen of the new single family house.

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Apartment 3 – 2 BD Apartment

Apartment 3 is accessible from the common hallway inside the front door and up the stairway. This apartment has a living area, a kitchen, a bathroom and 2 bedrooms. There is a back door entrance to a small deck and stairs down to the backyard.

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Apartment 4 – Basement Apartment (1 BD)

I don’t have any photos of this apartment!

The Outside

The front porch project is exciting. The current state of affairs is a fiberglass awning being held up by rod iron posts with vines growing out of control all over the awning. Besides being an eyesore, the awning does not compliment the 1890s architecture of the home, in fact it screams “1950″. We plan to tear down the main awning and the second level window awnings.

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Before we contacted an architect, we went around the neighborhood and captured “inspiration houses”. Some of these homes even look like they may have been built by the Fleming Brothers. Since this house is located in the Baker Historic District, all exterior changes must be approved by the Landmark Commission before you can get a permit. It was helpful to have these “inspiration houses” to show the LC to show that our plan was historically significant.

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The concrete slab for the front porch is in great shape, so we can build from that. We are planning to build three masonry columns and a half wall on top ot the concrete slab. The columns will reach up to the second story and support a second level exterior deck. We will replace one of the second story windows with French doors that open out to the new deck. We have discovered that there will even be a city view from this deck! The sketch below was the architect’s first rendition of these front features, we fell in love immediately

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Victorian Renovation in the Baker Neighborhood of Denver, Colorado

We are a little late getting this blog started, but late is better than never! We are a recently married couple undertaking a renovation of a home located in the Historic Baker District in Denver, Colorado. This is our first major renovation, and we thought keeping a blog would help us keep a great record of our progress. We hope this is a great way to keep our family and friends involved in our project too!

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You can’t see it in the photos, but there is actually a lot of detailed woodwork at the top of the house. Everything is painted this *lovely* shade of mint green (to match the *lovely* mint green awning). There is actually dentil molding and beautiful curly-cue corbels. Instead of shingles on the front face (there are shingles on the 3 other sides of the house), there is post and beam construction, reminiscent of the Tudor/Elizabethan style. Once we get in there with new paint, this top detail will really be the focus of the house.

The home was built in 1892 as a single family home. Research tells us that one of the famed “Fleming Brothers” designed, built and occupied the home for the first decade or so. The Fleming Brothers built homes and commercial buildings in and around the Baker/West Wash Park neighborhoods. They built several commercial building in the 1st/Broadway area. They also built the home immediately next door right around the same time ours was built.

Records are vague in the early 1900′s, but around 1925 John and Sarah Grant bought the home. From what I can piece together, John must have passed around the same time, leaving Sarah a widow. I believe at this time (1927ish) the home was converted to several apartments. From this time until now the house has functioned as a multi-unit apartment building.

There are currently four separate units in the home. The main floor is divided between a studio apartment (#1) and a 1-BD apartment (#2). This one bedroom apartment includes an addition on the back of the house, which may have at one time been a back porch. The entire second floor is a 2-BD apartment (#3). The basement apartment (#4) has a separate entrance in back and is a 1-BD unit.

We bought the home in June 2006, and inherited several tenant leases through the end of 2006. So, no major work could start until the tenants’ leases were up and they were moved out. The first project we tackled was updating the electrical box. The one we had (see photo below) was apparently from 2 generations ago, and was known to start fires! The other photos below are common areas in the house (please click photos to see the amazing details).

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The last tenant was moved out by January 8, 2007. We will be converting the structure back to a single family home. This means knocking down some walls, removing kitchens and bathrooms, rebuilding the front porch area, and possibly finishing the currently unfinished attic. We have been working with an architect since October 2006. The first project we tackled with him was the exterior porch/deck on the front of the house and the garage in back. We will wait to build the garage until most of the other work is done.