Here are a few facts about my little neglected blog:

1 – While it appears that I haven’t done anything on my blog in a million years, trust that I have mentally written about 100 posts. One day I’ll actually get to them.

2 – Readers have this blog from around the country have shared with me ideas and recommendations (for our ongoing house project) that have saved me oodles of time and money. Yea for me.

3 – I’ve met the best people through this blog. I often forget that I haven’t actually met a lot of people in person. And, with that, I recently met a new friend through this blog. This is where it gets cool.

Sean Jourdan is a Denver filmmaker who is working on his most recent project, “Teddy Boy”. He contacted me, as the backdrop for this psychological thriller is here in Colorado. Specifically, the primary location was written as a modern home. He contacted me to find potential ideas. While I would have loved to have him shoot his movie in my house, my house isn’t a fit. But, we had fun brainstorming local modern house ideas.

I’m so excited to say that Sean is potentially able to shoot his movie in this Denver area mid-century modern gem. This house was designed by Joseph Lort, an architect, who has other homes that are recognized for their historical significance. (One of his other homes was on the 2009 Historic Denver Summer of Modern Home Tour).

Here’s what I love about this particular house where Sean hopes to shoot his movie.

- I love the dramatic lines – look at that overlook/balcony.

- It’s in Bow Mar – a neighborhood southwest of Denver – all of the homes are on expansive lots adjacent to a lake and with views of the mountains. There WERE a lot more mid-century modern gems in this neighborhood, BUT…you know what happens, right? Scrape, scrape, scrape. The fact that this house is still here and has been restored is fabulous.

- This house is on the cover of the Historic Denver Modern Home Guide. (Which, by the way, you gotta know that these books are great. There are 20 books – for all of the historic neighborhoods in Denver).

Here’s the kicker—this house is a few grand over Sean’s location budget. Sean has met his fundraising goal for his movie. If he can raise just a few more thousand dollars, he will be able to shoot his movie in this fabulous house. I’m totally selfish—I want to see the interior of this house! Want to help? Contributions of ANY amount are welcome. And, even if you can’t contribute, can you please forward/post this on your Facebook/Twitter/Blog pages?

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MOVIE AND TO BECOME A BACKER OF TEDDY BOY

Sorry for the last minute notification here, but I just found out about this. Historic Denver is holding a series of preservation workshops for homeowners. Based on the info on their site, they appear to be very practical.

This workshop is held this Saturday, November 12 3-7PM.

As you may remember, we applied for (and were approved) for Colorado Historic tax credits. We did a lot of homework about the preservation of our existing house. I would have loved to have attended a workshop like this!

And, the best part? It’s focused on mid-century modern homes.

The schedule of workshops for the evening is:
3pm-4pm: Historic preservation basics and available tax credits
4pm-5pm: Energy efficiency for the older home
5pm-6pm: Window restoration and weatherization
6pm-7pm: Masonry and wood trim repairs

I love reading the incoming search terms on the website. I’ve been seeing lots of incoming traffic for “Denver Modern Houses Driving Tour” and other derivations. I hope that means that lots of people are coming to Denver for the Denver Modernism Show at the end of the month. Or, maybe our modern loving Denverites are just getting modern love. So, I thought I’d share my favorite modern driving tours of Denver. This includes both Mid-Century Modern AND Mid-Century Ranches. Because I do love me a lot of MidCentury Ranches, too. Note, this isn’t an exhaustive list of mid-century goodness in Denver. Just the first thing that comes to mind.

First, I’m going to recommend you buy two books, both published by Historic Denver. These books were both written by Diane Wray Tomasso, resident of Arapahoe Acres and Historian. You can buy both books at the Tattered Cover bookstore or directly from Historic Denver. We’ve thumbed through our books so many times that they fell apart. (yea, we need new ones). The first book is all about Mid-Century Modern in Denver. Sadly, a lot of the houses in this book simply don’t exist any longer. But, so many do still exist and there area addresses in the book, so you can use it as your personal guide. The second book is all about my hood! It’s a full book of goodness about Arapahoe Acres. Lots of details. Our house in on Page 72.

Arapahoe Acres – Okay, let’s start with my home neighborhood. You gotta come here. Everyone’s yards look so nice and pretty now. We’re only 2 miles south of Wash Park. We’re between S. Downing and S. Franklin. North border is E. Bates Ave and South border is Dartmouth. We’re just south of Yale.

Southern Hills - Southern Hills is a neighborhood just east of Arapahoe Acres. It’s south of Yale and East of University. If you have school aged kids, then it’s the Slaven’s school district. I could spend hours driving through here. Loads and loads of beautiful sprawling ranches with mid-mod’s sprinkled in. Most of these houses are intact and have not been popped or scraped. I think it’s because they are all rather large (3,000 sf or larger) and I think a lot of them are still owned by older folks. This is my favorite place to drive just to look at tiny details.

Hilltop – This is a great neighborhood that has lots of mid-century houses. Sadly, so many houses have scraped for, ahem, the McMansion or McMuddle. Historic Denver hosted their summer house tours there a few years ago and it was heaven to see so many beautiful homes. I posted several posts from the tour last year here and here and here and here and here. These are definitely some grand houses.

Arapahoe Hills – This is Arapahoe Acres’s sister or cousin neighborhood. It was designed and started by the same builder as Arapahoe Acres (Ed Hawkins), but finished by the former head carpenter, Clyde Mannon. The houses are bigger, but share  a lot of the same personality. It’s southwest of Denver…West of Lowell, South of Belleview and just north of Berry Ave.

Bow Mar - Right after you finish driving through Arapahoe Hills, go west on Berry Avenue into Bow Mar. This is another neighborhood of sprawling low slung ranches (or they mostly were at one time) with a few mid-mod’s. Again, it’s pretty sad that so many have been scraped or made into FrankenHouses, but you should still drive through there.

Harvey Park – This Denver neighborhood is home to lots of mid-century modern homes. I haven’t done a proper tour in some time, but I think I need to. They have a nice website, too. Some Cliff May designed homes, too.

Krisana Park – Just east of Colorado Boulevard is another pocket of mid-century modern gems. I’ve toured a lot of them during open houses. Some good, some great and some with “interesting” remodels.

I’m sure that I’m missing a ton of information. This is just a sampling of neighborhoods that I find myself driving through when I’m trying to get my little boy a nap. Why not enjoy my drive while he’s napping, right?

When 5280 Magazine interviewed us a few months ago and asked for our favorite Denver mid-century modern vintage resources, Lee Alex Decor was definitely on our list. They are centrally located in Denver (near the Baker neighborhood). It’s a sweet spot for me – between downtown Denver and my house right on Broadway. Because our son, Ty, almost always refused to nap at home, I would often drive around and let him nap while I did all of my drive-through worthy errands (bank, Starbucks, dry-cleaning). But, if I could score the Rock Star parking, I could also peek in the windows while Ty was sleeping. (Don’t worry…he was only 5 feet away from me and nice and secure).

I digress. When I talked to the 5280 interviewer, I forgot a few other things that we purchased from Lee Alex Decor. Here is the rest of the fun.

The two barstools in the picture are from Lee Alex Decor. They are generic Danish teak chairs from the 1950′s. I’d really like to have these lovely barstools from Erik Buck, but I don’t have the “bucks” for that!

I bought three butterfly chairs from Lee Alex Decor. I bought three others from other people, too. And, NONE of them are the same dimensions. Which will make it a real joy for me to make the replacement covers.

Sorry for the bad lighting here. I bought two Eames LCM chairs during Lee Alex Decor’s sale during the Modernism Show last year. These particular chairs came out of the Colorado College Library – the plates are still on the bottom. I passed on the other chairs available where people had carved their initials into them. I have them set up as side chairs in my bedroom and my son’s bedroom. But, I pull them out when we have a lot of guests over.

Tim has been on the lookout for a good Starburst clock.Tim seemed to like this one the best. The clock part doesn’t work, but we just need to replace the little clock motor. A project for another day.

Once again, our lovely C. Jere bird sculpture that was taken out of the Littleton restaurant that Tim remembers from high school. And, I think it fills out that big concrete block wall, too. Tim would like to build a longer, “floating” console that would be a little higher, which I think would help with the scale of the wall, too.

The cocktail cart is from ModMood, but the teak ice bucket is from Lee Alex decor.

Be sure to check out Lee Alex Decor. They are actually in the middle of moving to a new location, but it’s only two blocks from their old Broadway location. They’ve been caught in the Denver permit cluster, so they aren’t open for customers yet (as of August 4), but they are posting updates on their website and Facebook every day. They promise to have twice the space with lots more merchandise. They turnover their inventory very quickly, so there is always something new to see. Now, I didn’t quite realize I had purchased this all from Lee Alex Decor until now.

After our consult with Jamie Foley from the blog, Sanctuary Home, we’ve been keeping our eyes open for things to add to the house that would help us make it a home. And, to fill out so much of the empty space. One day while driving around and procrastinating house projects (and I think it was raining), we stopped in at Lee Alex Decor on Broadway. I’ve been looking for bookshelves, but Tim looked high on the wall at a sculpture. (I tend to forget to look up high since I’m height challenged).

After we asked Theo and Heather at Lee Alex about the sculpture, we learned that the sculpture had been pulled out an old restaurant on Littleton Blvd down in Littleton. Tim then realized that he remembered the sculpture. He grew up going to that particular restaurant and had a lot of friends waiting tables there. I think the sculpture was installed in the 60′s, but I love that we found something that had a little personal history for Tim and mid-century.

So, here we go. It’s a C. Jere sculpture. It’s actually three separate pieces. Tim wanted to have them overlap a bit, but he didn’t want to drill into the actual block. So, he drilled into the joints of the block. The sculpture was originally black, but the paint has worn off over the years and left mostly the brass(?) finish. We could go ahead and strip the birds, but we kind of like the random half black, half metal finish.

One of the things I love most about living in Arapahoe Acres are the homeowners. Our neighborhood is filled with professionals from so many creative professional fields.  One of my neighbors in Stacie Smith. In addition to being a mom of three and the ringleader for our last two neighborhood home tours, she is also a professional photographer. Which means that we are super lucky to have her talent because she takes all of the pictures for our neighborhood newsletter! Our home is going to be featured in the upcoming Arapahoe Acres quarterly newsletter and Stacie shared some of the pictures with me.

While I love the light pouring into my house through the numerous windows, I can’t take a good picture of my home, so I’m so grateful to have these! Also, if you’re in the Denver area, Stacie takes amazing pictures of kids and families. I still cannot believe how she captured my Ty boy. If you look at her site, you’ll see how her Arapahoe Acres home is a stunning backdrop for much of her work. Click on the category menu on the left hand of her site to see all of the other Arapahoe Acres homes that she photographed the last several years.

Look what I found! Last summer, Denver Historic hosted a tour of Hilltop Mid-Mod houses. We were in a bit of a rush with a cranky and sleepy toddler…and we had just started remodeling our house. I already did blog posts of the other three houses that we saw on the tour. But, I forgot about one that has been perpetually held in a DRAFT in my blog list. Like finding a couple bucks buried in a jacket!

This is the Neufield House. This recent remodel is especially cool because the new homeowner updated/remodeled/restored his house WITH the oversight of the original architect. I wish I had written down all of the info, but I thought how fun that is. I sometimes wish we could chat with our homes’ builder/architect!

Also, if you click in the first picture, you will be taken to my Flickr stream where you can see every picture I took in the house!

Oh yea, you know why I love this house, right? It’s the flat roof!

The rooms were really light and spacious. I love the awning windows. I think those might be Milgard aluminum replacement windows. I have two in my addition.

They had a table full of photography of the house from the 50′s and 70′s. They were credited as being from the Denver library. Someone mentioned that I wasn’t supposed to take pictures of the pictures, but I promise I didn’t see any sign telling me not to!

Isn’t that table crazy? I love the legs. I didn’t even notice that until today when I put this pic in the post. I was so fixated on the clean kitchen lines before.

Isn’t this lovely?

Okay…I know this is a super close-up of the exterior brick/tile. But, I NEED to tell  you about this. Apparently, all of this was painted at one time. That means someone stripped it all. Look closely. That is grooved brick/tile (terra cotta?) Whoever did this stripping work was a master! I say this as someone who has drowned myself in booze after long, depressing days of stripping wood and aluminum windows.

Now this beautiful wall unit is not something that I’ve ever seen described as a mid-mod piece. In fact, I ALMOST bought a unit like this in my last condo before I ever got into our mid-century modern love affair. But let me introduce you to one of my favorite things…This is a Vitsoe Unit. It was originally designed in 1960, which I guess, does make it, indeed, a mid-century modern joy. It’s still sold and has even more options now. I know it looks so simple, but it is totally configurable, sturdy in its solid German engineering, and I’m pretty sure I need to save my pennies for a setup. I know Tim wants a Cado unit, but I might fight him on this one.

Hope you enjoyed my little buried find!

Oh yes, I am back. And, I have so many blog posts. I don’t know you all do it…work on your house AND blog. I can’t seem to multi-task. I’m catching up on my family blog and the house blog is next! In the meantime, it’s that time again. Yes, the 2010 Arapahoe Acres Home Tour!

Also, if you can’t join us, please come and check out our tour website. We are also selling a really beautiful Arapahoe Acres guide book with amazing photographs of interiors. My neighbor and friend, Stacie Smith is a professional photographer and has captured beautiful pics just for you! So, you can check out the interiors of our homes even if you can’t be here. Just go to the 2010 Arapahoe Acres Home Tour website.

Can you pass the word on? Here is the html to simply copy and paste into your blog…

<a href=”http://www.tourarapahoeacres.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/AAfliersmall.jpg”><img title=”AAfliersmall” src=”http://www.tourarapahoeacres.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/AAfliersmall.jpg” alt=”" width=”600″ height=”196″ /></a>

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!