The 2009 Arapahoe Acres Home Tour was decidedly a huge success. We had some initial neighborhood resistance to having a ton of people parade through the hood, but a great turn out of lovely mid-mod fans made the day a big success.

7 Homes & 4 Gardens were open for tours from 10A to 2P. We had a little over 150 people attending, including a few City Councilmen and the Mayor of Englewood. The weather was cool, but sunny, and thankfully did NOT snow like this weekend. I got to meet a few lovely online friends from Twitter at the tour, which was a huge bonus.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to tour any of the homes and gardens, but I had seen about half of the homes before. And, Tim toured the homes and the owners said we could crash for informal tours at a later date. (I’ll be there!)

We raised about $3000 for our local elementary school, Charles Hay. My neighbors, Stacie & Cecilia, are parents of children at the school now and are helping launch the school’s new organic gardens. Since I am a future parent of a child that will attend the school, I’m so happy that we were able to raise money for the school while having so much fun.

We’re already talking about next year. We know that we’ll definitely hold tours when we know we’ll have a better guarantee of good weather. Hello summer, we need ya back! And, hopefully, our house will be in good enough shape to tour next year.

So glad that some of you were able to come out and meet us and tour our AA homes!

It’s here…tomorrow is the Arapahoe Acres Home & Garden Tour. We’ll have 8 homes plus 4 gardens to tour. I’ll be volunteering at the registration table at 1430 E. Bates Avenue, Englewood, 80113.

Come out out!

The Coin House is spectacular! Built in the early 1960’s and designed by Tician Papachristou and Charles Haertling, it is a sprawling, beautiful time capsule. I didn’t think I’d be able to get over there, but we had a few minutes to dash through the house. Here are some of the pics.

Click on this picture to see my entire Flickr Stream:

Here’s a huge bonus! Modern in Denver, the local modernism magazine, is hosting a special event at the Coin House on September 17 from 6-9PM. AND, they are previewing the Visual Acoustics – The Modernism of Julius Shulman film that is showing on September 24 at the Starz Film Center. I ran through the open house like my hair was on fire trying to see all of the cool details. If I had KNOWN about this event where I would get to slowly savor all of the fun loveliness, I would have chilled out. So, if you’re in Denver or anywhere nearby, RSVP at Modern In Denver for this rare event!

Do you have a spare $1.6 Million dollars to spoil yourself with some pristine mid-mod love? This incredible and original home is on the market. I’ve only seen it from the outside, but I’d like to get to the open house there on Thursday from noon to 2pm

Go to MileHiModern’s website for all of the details and property info.

A girl can dream, right? I just hope they find a buyer for this house that will appreciate and love it.

I’m so excited that our neighborhood is hosting a Home & Garden Tour October 3. I believe we’ll have eight homes to tour. The proceeds benefit our local elementary school, Charles Hay. My neighbor, Stacie Smith, is organizing the event and I’m trying to help with some of the planning in between remodeling fun. We’re hoping this becomes an annual event. If so, we’ll be showing our home next year. You know, after it doesn’t look like a war zone.

Tickets can be purchased in advance at Mod Livin on Colfax. Please come out for the tours and invite all your friends!

Welcome to the third stop on our Historic Denver Summer of Modernism Tour…the Amter House. I loved this house. It was split level…short stairways separating the big open spaces. It didn’t feel like a huge, sprawling house, but it seemed like it had so much living space. It was seriously hailing while we were at the house, so I was literally taking pictures of the outside while running in my platform heels. It had beautiful windows, brick work and built-ins. And, I LOVE the color grey, so I loved the outside. (I’m dull like that. I’ve only owned silver or grey cars).

I think the original owners’ daughter lives in the home now and is applying for historic designation, which is fabulous. So many special midmod houses in the neighborhood are scraped, so having it protected would keep this beautiful house in existence.

Again, click on any of the pictures below to get to the complete Flickr stream.

The Kohn/Nueseteter House was the second stop on our Historic Denver Summer of Modernism Tour. Fortunately, we were allowed to take pictures of the interior of this house. This Usonian house was designed by Victor Horbein and it is huge! It’s loaded with wood on the walls, wood on the ceiling, wood everywhere. I got a surge of confidence when a tour volunteer reported that the owners has stripped all of the wood like we are doing. I would have never guessed. It looks like it had always been treaured and not covered in paint!

After looking at other Flickr streams from Historic Denver, I’m pretty sure I missed an entire week of the house! This house is large and looks like it has done some entertaining over the years. But, even with the formal living areas, it seems like a casual, easy living house. I can imagine running around barefoot in this house with all of the doors open and living very much and indoor/outdoor existence. (Hey, isn’t that what I want when our house is finished?) Also, I love how the current owners have covered the bedroom corridor hallway in family photos and memorabilia.

The bedrooms are really large and all loaded with great built-in’s. Two of the bedrooms open directly onto the rear patio/yard area. Yep, they have a pool…again, I think there have been some good parties over the years.

Oh, and by the way, I love the flat roof, all of the windows…tons of clerestory/transom windows.

Click on any of the pictures to get to the full Flickr stream!

The Francis House was our first stop on the house tour. Instad of making slideshows, I’m going to just link to the first pic in my  Flickr stream. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, although there may be pictures on the Denver Historic Stream.

The house had so many incredible features, but my favorite were the built-in’s upstairs. I’m not big on spiral staircases, as I just imagine myself spiraling DOWN, but it was pretty amazing upstairs. The house is painted in a bright colors, which I think were based on the original colors. There is a fun outdoor entertainment area, also.

2009 Historic Denver Mid-century Modern Hilltop House Tour
Originally uploaded by Historic Denver, Inc.

House Tour

The Denver Summer of Modernism Home Tour was last month & I’m finally getting to write about them. Shannon Stanbro at 5280mod had a great post with great pics here. She covers the historical details, while I’ll tell you my non-professional opinion of the houses. Here is a picture of each of the houses we visited.

The Francis House @ 35 Eudora

Kohn/Nueseteter House @ 1 Eudora

The Amter House @ 222 S. Fairfax

The Touff House @ 47 Ash

The Neufield House @ 40 S. Bellaire

We had Ty in to & it was crazy weather so we skipped the church and the last house. I’ll post a flickr slideshow for each of the houses above in the next posts. But, definitely check out these links.

Here is Historic Denver’s detailed house tour information. This provides details on the architect, the style of architecture, and some fun background on each house.

Historic Denver also posted a Flickr Stream of photos here.