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.

In the 5280 Magazine article, we got to share our favorite vintage shops in the Denver area. One of my regular “haunts” is ModMood-Retro Consignment out on 44th in Wheat Ridge. The consignment side of the shop is huge and has a lot of turnover. I also like that they don’t restore or improve anything because I prefer to get things cheaper and then make my own restoration decisions.

Here are the things that we’ve gotten over at Retro Consignment.

Check out this sad, torn up little orange couch. The fabric has been destroyed. Apparently by the previous owners’ cats. I’m not too sad since I only paid $100 and the fabric is actually wool and terribly itchy. I’ve already picked out a perfect teal fabric. I just need to save some money for the fabric and upholstery work.

I love how the couch is petite, which works for this somewhat narrow, rectangular room. I also like the open, rounded side. It’s already become my favorite reading spot in the house, despite the itchy fabric.

Here is a couch from Room & Board that looks really similar. This one has the corner unit (maybe mine did originally), but I’m going for this final look, but in turquoise.

I bought the cocktail cart from Retro Consignment right before Christmas. Tim doesn’t like it — he thinks it’s too granny. But, I like the combo of teak, glass and metal. And, the price was great at $85 on sale.

I sort of forgot about this little lamp. I have it in my sewing room. I just love it and it’s little flexible neck makes it perfect for the sewing room. I just need to get a bulb that doesn’t get so hot.

One last thing. Ty always likes to know where Tim travels and wants to know where it is on the map. I got this great vintage globe at ModMood/Retro Consignment.

If you’re out on the west side of Denver, go check out ModMood/Retro Consignment. There is a lot of great stuff out there!

While we were still in the massive mess of our addition and restoration/restovation, I was already on the prowl for things to decorate our house. One small problem. It took Tim and I about four years to decide/negotiate/agree on our couch. So, I knew I couldn’t just WAIT until we were ready to move back into the house before I started scouting out the furnishings for our house. If you’ve seen the 5280 Magazine article, you already know about our favorite Denver vintage shops. (Later this week, I’ll be posting MORE about the things that I bought at all of these places and a few other favorite sources I have).

Tim and I felt pretty good about big stuff…dining room tables, barstools, big furniture. But, we are paralyzed when it comes to choosing new color palettes and small stuff…you know, the stuff that actual Interior Designers are good at. But, since I spent most (or all) of our money on the actual house project, I didn’t have the means to have a professional Interior Designer on retainer (although, wouldn’t that be the most amazing thing ever).

And now I introduce you to Jamie Foley at the blog, Sanctuary Home. I first “met” Jamie online on Twitter (back when I was pretending that I could keep up with one more online place.) But, I met her there and then started following her blog (and subsequently met her briefly at the 2009 Arapahoe Acres home tour). I really liked Jamie’s blog and the work she was doing for her clients. I liked that she worked with all different styles And, I love her Craigslist “round-up’s” of great finds. So, I contacted Jamie and asked if she’d be open to working with me on a consulting basis. As I said, I really would have loved to have hired her for a comprehensive interior design services, but she agreed to work with me on an consulting basis to give me some strategic guidance.

- Take a look at our house and the decor/furnishings that we’d already started collecting.

- Listen to my (maybe) crazy ideas of colors and wish lists and tell me if she thought it was a good direction or not.

- Keep an eye out for furniture that might be a fit in our house. (She’s been doing a lot of that, but I just haven’t had the funds for the really fun stuff).

- Ask for any suggestions for making our house a home.

Jamie was awesome. She told me I wasn’t crazy about some of our decisions and that we were on a good path. But, she said that we were definitely MISSING something. We were missing things that made our house uniquely ours. Yea, we agreed. But, since Tim and I seem to be afraid of STUFF, you know the cool stuff and collections that would make the house, that made it a little hard.

Well, we took a few little baby steps. We had to hang some art on the wall. But, we don’t really have any art. So, I did the best I could to personalize our walls. On our bedroom walls, I framed pages from a  vintage skiwear catalog from 1974. I found the catalog in Tim’s old childhood boxes. Tim and two of his siblings all posed in the Aspen Skiwear catalog when they were kids. (Their Dad owned a commercial photography and  video business. Hence, they were the free models). I loved them and hated them being boxed up. And, the catalogs were falling apart, so I framed them as our art.

All of the pictures lined up with the cover page.

Tim is letter A.

I don’t know exactly which one is Tim.

Tim is letter C. His brother, Mark, is letter A and his sister, Amy, is letter B. Cute, huh?

Tim is letter B on this one.

Now, this is something totally different. I recently found this watercolor in a stored box. One night I was waiting for friends at one of our favorite San Francisco restaurants, Plouf. The man sitting next to me at the bar was doing watercolors. Before I knew it, he had done a sketch of me and a watercolor. Tim mounted it on foam core and I saved it. I always liked it and reminds me of San Francisco memories.

These shots below are pictures of the office. Tim framed design sketches from one of his favorite graduate school studio projects.

These below are just more graduate school projects. You can’t see the detail, but they are actually cool little design vignettes.

And, that is my first attempt at “personalizing” our house and making it more of a home. I’ll post more pics this weekend of other personal additions we’ve made lately. It’s already made a big difference in the house to have items that are really uniquely us. We needed that nudge from Jamie Foley to actually do it, though.

Since Tim has his Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture, he has had a long love of modern design. I grew up in Louisiana and was surrounded by country chic, shabby shic, and, Pottery Barn antiques (before they were actually new things sold to look like antiques in Pottery Barn). As a non-design person, I didn’t really have a style. I just knew that I wanted a house with really good windows, whatever that meant. And, I always loved stealthy low slung houses. I liked beach bungalows tucked behind trees and long low ranches.

I’m back in Louisiana for two weeks to hang out with my family. While on a long run this past weekend around LSU, I “found” some mid-century houses that I’ve never noticed before, even though I had walked or run past these houses no less than a thousand times during college. Maybe I didn’t notice them, but maybe they became part of my buried psyche. How could I not notice them?

As always, click on any picture to see obnoxious amounts of pictures in my Flickr stream. Maybe one day I’ll have them more organized and better labeled.

I always loved the LSU student union, but it did seem a little groovy to me. It’s had some updates, but I think they did an okay job. The space is actually great. I wish I could have taken pics of the theater. I remember it being very cool.

We also took the new bridge between St. Francisville to New Roads. Until a month ago, it was connected by a ferry. I’ve never been to New Roads (or, I don’t remember). It’s an oxbow called False River with lots of weekend houses and “camps”. Most of the camps used to really be camps and modest raised homes. Now, there are all sorts of muddles. But, look what I saw. A little trio of NEW modern fishing camps. Aren’t they lovely? I tried to find the architect, but I couldn’t find anything yet. Probably an LSU Architecture Professor.

Also, look where I spent five years of elementary school. I know that many schools were built in the 1950′s and 1960′s and so many of those schools are falling apart now. And most are probably not appreciated for their low slung, stealthy beauty. I love my poor old elementary school. They added on to the school with a completely boring muddle style architecture, because I’m sure NO ONE in my hometown actually appreciates the original awesomeness.

Don’t look now, but some people in my hometown suffer the same syndrome that I like to call “Lots of money, but no taste”. While MOST of the homes around the LSU lakes are mostly not modern, they are still grand southern beauties. But, every now and then, someone decides to scrape something perfectly good and build something like this. Otherwise known as the monster McMuddle house that made my eyes bleed. But, I couldn’t look away. Oh, the horror.

If you happened to see my blog a few weeks ago, I posted about my friend, Tiffany, and her cool vintage, mini-modern estate sale finds. She had listed her “rooms in miniature” on ebay. We were really hoping that they would find a new home where they could be appreciated.

The three “rooms” did sell on ebay. The living room was bought by blogger, Call of the Small. She assembled the set and took great picture  of the room on her blog. Head over there to see the awesomeness. Tiffany is trying to contact the buyer of the other two “rooms” to see if we can see assembled photos of her two rooms. I still can’t believe that they sold these little rooms with everything down to the artwork, wall panels and furniture. So much fun!

Photo Credit: Call of the Small Blog – photo links directly to her fabulous site. Check out her post for all of the miniature modern fun.

One of the greatest outcomes of our big remodel/restovation has been the friendship with our architect, Chris Craver, and his wife, Tiffany. Like Tim and I, they share our champagne taste and on a Microbrewery Beer budget. And, they have short people living in their house, too. Since fun, part-time, lucrative jobs just aren’t being thrown our way, Tiffany and I have gotten a creative lately. I started selling random stuff on eBay (mostly ladies clothes & shoes) and then I roped Tiffany into the madness.

While I’m selling boring old shoes, Tiffany has been collecting cool vintage items for the last twenty years. She is selling some items on eBay now and I’m working with her to launch her vintage etsy site. In the meantime, I HAVE to post about this cool mid-century miniature stuff that she has!

Tiffany has three unopened and never used boxes of mid-century modern miniature “rooms”. Seriously, they are like little miniature dioramas with cool Danish furniture and wood paneling and wallpaper. Everything to be assembled. And, none of it has been opened. She has a full living room, dining room and bedroom. They are seriously cute. Of course, her kids and my child would destroy them in five minutes, so they need to go to a home where they will be treasured (and not mutilated).

Here are the “Rooms in Miniature” posted on eBay — Bedroom — Dining Room — Living Room

Here are some of the pictures of the box and unassembled furniture and decor.

Front of the box – shows the final size of the room.

Description on the box.

Little hard to see, but this is the packaged up furniture that has never been set up.

More of the boxed up components. Do you see those little wood panels for the walls?

The full dining room all set up. The room includes the artwork and the wall units, too.

I love the bedroom. Look at that built-in bed and shelf.

Do you think I could Tim to build this for me in my real home? In big person size?

Tiffany and I were trying to do some background research on these little “rooms”. Not quite dollhouses, as they are standalone rooms. These particular rooms are from the 1960′s from Miner Industries. These have the original sales tag from Montgomery Ward. My mother, a child of the 1950′s and 1960′s thinks that the rooms were a more economical gift than an entire dollhouse. We couldn’t find much on the actual manufacturing company, but we came across an entire world of people who collect miniatures and a smaller world of those that collect modern miniatures. And, for your reading pleasure, here are some cool links that I found.

First, a New York Times article from 2008 about the Modern Miniature World. There are loads of links within that article. Mostly, these appear to be people creating, collecting and building new modern houses, rooms and furniture.

Here is a blog called Mini Modern with lots of current modern miniatures. This blog has a link to a flickr stream of mini modern furniture. I want it all.

Want to buy your own Mini Modern house? You can on Etsy here.

I love this blog, Call of the Small. It looks like she has old and new modern miniatures.

Miniatures by Annina is another great modern mini blog.

And, who knew there was an entire magazine dedicated to miniature houses/architecture – Small Magazine is a magazine for all of these miniature design meccas.

Does anyone already have anything like this? I’d love to see pictures. And, I’d love to see this set up in a mid-mod home!

When we got back from Thanksgiving vacation, we thought things were a little strange in the house. A plant was knocked over and then I started finding little bits of poo. We freaked out thinking it was from mice. But, we couldn’t seem to trap the mice. A week later, Tim ran upstairs after working in the garage (on the kitchen cabinets) and found the culprit. We had a squirrel trying to make our home his home. We aren’t sure how he got in, but we think it was the fireplace….since he ran straight for it when we flushed him out.

We’re not sure if the flu was messed up or what. But, we don’t light many fires and we just haven’t had time to put a proper animal deterrent thingy on the top of the fireplace. The firewood stuffed fireplace was my aesthetically pleasing answer to keeping the squirrels out.

Postscript: Now the squirrel sneers at us from outside of our window. We think he’s plotting his revenge.

I’ve gotten really anxious that it looks like we just moved in. I’m tired of meeting people at the house and explaining that we “are still in process”. I know how much we’ve accomplished, but I’m ready to have art on the walls. I’m ready for our house to be lived in. And, like it always happens, I happened to find some goodies on Craigslist. I found this CB2 rug on Craigslist. The size is perfect when I only have 2 or 3 leaves in the table. It seems a little undersized when I have the table extended out to its full 8 feet.

This is another rug I got at a new consignment shop west of Denver, Mod Mood.

I’ve been on the lookout for at Atomic clock for Tim, but I never found anything until now that was in my price range and the right scale. I also got this at ModMood. You can’t really see it, but I also got the rug on this floor this weekend. It’s a West Elm rug, but I bought it on Craigslist. It was a good weekend. I got three rugs for under $350. I would love to have beautiful Angela Adams like rugs that are soft and cuddly, but it’s nice to get a bargain and it seems a little silly to buy anything to precious with a crazy preschooler in my house.

I also bought this little cocktail cart. Tim isn’t wild about it, but I like that I can actually serve from it and it’s mobile. I also like the mix of teak and metal.  I also got the little vintage wood ice bucket from Lee Alex Decor here in Denver.

It’s been rather fun being back in the house this Christmas. We had to spend last Christmas in the apartment when our remodel went “slightly” over schedule. So, I may have gotten a little too excited with celebrating this year. However, I’ve never had much space or much Christmas decorating “stuff”. So, I’m only an amateur at this Christmas decorating business. And, by the way, I’m not much for the standard red and green decorations.

Pic 1: My starburst wreath made from twigs. I saw where folks at “The Painted Hive”  made it and posted it on their blog here.

Pic 2: Christmas tree made from cut out paper circles made from mod paper.

Pic 3: Ty dressed as a lumberjack in front of the Christmas tree.

Pic 4: View of the living room and Christmas tree—Ty about to open gifts on Christmas morning.

Pic 5 and 6: I finally got to sit a proper dining room table with my grandmother’s china. I think it’s from the 1960′s, but I love how it looks timeless.