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

Sometimes you don’t have time to do a whole project, but the current state of affairs is just too dreary! We really want to re-do our bathrooms and we even have the historic sinks waiting to be installed in our basement, but no time yet…and not money yet. But, the bathrooms function (somewhat), so it’s time to brighten them up. So, I’m doing a little speed painting in 2nd bathroom before the neighborhood party.

Straight up Benjamin Moore Decorator White paint. We like the Aura low-VOC, no priming paint. This one is for bathroom and spas for the moisture. The drywall definitely needs some help, so this is just our temporary touch-up. Now, I’m back at it for the day. Trying to knock this out before I pick up Tim at the airport this afternoon!

Well, maybe we’re not completely to AFTER yet. Maybe more “in-progress” pics. But, when I tripped on some of our back yard pics before we started the addition. Big difference. I do miss having trees and we planning five fruit trees and a big shade tree right by our office.

Notice I’m only showing pictures of the back of the house. That’s because we didn’t change anything on the front. We really didn’t want to touch the front of the house. We think it was perfect just as it was. And, we followed the guidelines of our neighborhood convenants and guidelines about respecting the unique front facing features and details. Yea, we drink that historical Kool-Aid. I’ll be sure to do a little before/after of our interior shots soon, too.

Now, here’s the same views of the house now. It looks a little like a wild jungle with all of the garden plants.

When we did our West facing addition with our Nanawall, we always knew we would need to deal with the extreme solar gain. We love the west facing windows at night for the great view of the sky and stars. And, in the winter we even have some mountain views. And, we really love having that sun pouring into the house during the winter.

But, between 4 and 7 every day, our addition was cooking! We looked at doing structured patio covers, but we didn’t want to lose the view and it really would have changed the look of the rear of the house. We also tried using one of those Coolaroo patio covers, but the dimensions were all wrong and it just looked hacky on our house. But, I have neighbors where they fit smaller scale patios and look great.

So, we went on the hunt for a exterior solar shade. We needed a solution that would block as much of the UV, but would still allow us to keep the Nanawall open for airflow and allow us to walk in and out of the patio. And, we wanted something that still let you see out the house. Here is the solar shade that had installed.

We could have had the shade motorized for a small amount more, but that would have required some sort of rail(s) ont he sides. But, we didn’t want to attach anything to the sides of the house. So, it takes about 30 seconds to manually raise and lower the shade manually.

If you’re in the market for one of these, I highly recommend shopping around. I got wildly varying bids. And, there wasn’t much difference in the end product. We used a local company, Liberty Home Products, that’s been in Denver for over 30 years. They make all of their own shades and have a two week turnaround. And, they were half the cost of other quotes that I got. What do you think?

In the future, we plan to box out a fascia around the exterior shade so that it looks like the shade is descending right out of the house. But, that’s a project for another day.

I did a blog post last year about our Nanawall. I wrote that post because I see so many people finding my blog after searching for info on Nanawalls. The funny thing is that at I see at least 5 unique searches every day for Nanawall coming into my blog. So, I thought it might be good to add some info.

First, I get lots of searches for “cheap Nanawall”. Now, I don’t know if there is any such thing as a cheap Nanawall, but it’s not nearly as expensive as people may think. And, I think that there are ways to configure the Nanawall for maximum effect at the lowest cost. (As I said in my last blog post about this, they are sort of like diamond rings. If you stay right under a carrot, the ring will be infinitely less expensive).

Because so many people search for Nanawall costs, I’ll go ahead and say what ours cost. Our window-wall cost $16K WITH installation. That is a four panel wall that is 12 feet wide and almost 12 feet tall (I think 11’8″). We originally had it designed to be wider, but the local distributor worked with our architect to “optimize” the configuration to get the price down. We also installed a fixed glass window directly adjacent to the Nanawall. This gives the allusion that we have a lot bigger Nanawall, but for a lot less money. We compared the Nanawall to a few other products, but none of them offered the great folding function at the same cost. We probably could have saved even more money buy decreasing the height a little bit and losing one of the panels (and 3 1/2 feet of width) and just installed another fixed glass panel on the other side. Also, we opted to NOT have a “man door” (which is basically a standalone door adjacent to the panels or integrated into the panels). I’m really glad we didn’t do that. Besides the cost, I think it would have been unnecessary.

If you are looking for other window-wall systems, we have Arapahoe Acres neighbors who have awesome sliding panel systems. We would have considered those, but we didn’t have anywhere to actually slide the panels out of the way. But, if you do, that is always an option. Then, they can be completely invisible.

Now, if you’re one of those people that is always searching for Nanawall and landing on my blog, feel free to shoot me an email. I’m happy to answer any questions at all for you. We’ve love our Nanawall and it is engineered so nicely. And, our local distributor and installer (LTS) was really great to work. Also, I just noticed that someone searched on “R Value of a Nanawall”. Here is the link to the energy efficiency ratings. The ratings are different depending on the frame type.

I also saw an incoming search for “How to properly open a Nanawall”. I don’t know how to explain it, but there are two handles. One to drag it open or closed. And, the second handle is a lever. You just rotate it to either lock or unlock. My four year old knows how to open it. It takes two hands to close it, so I have to help him with that. Easy, easy.

P.S. If anyone from Nanawall lands on my blog, I’m more than happy to accept any gifts or compensation for gushing about your product. In fact, I’d like to replace or plain-Jane traditional sliding window (on the east side of my house by my dining room) with a small Nanawall. Wink Wink.

***Seriously, I have not received any compensation for promoting the Nanawall product. My architect, Chris Craver, had worked on a few other jobs where they were installed and recommended it to us.

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.

Sometimes I hate to post about something until we’re done with a project. BUT, if I waited until we finish, it might never get posted! We worked on the patio over the Memorial Day weekend. It would be so much better if we had an entire work crew. Here is the progress so far.

Here is Tim grading the patio. This is always harder than I imagine. Because Tim has the patio slightly sloped away from the house, the grading has to be pretty precise. Tim is using two 2 x 4′s that have been connected. He uses it to “drag” the grey breeze into a consistent slope.

Now, Tim is tamping the grey breeze so that it is a consistent, hard base.

Because the stones are NOT consistent in size, I measured all of the sandstone pavers and wrote the depth on the side. Then, I sorted all of the stones into stacks by their size. This way, it is a little easier to group each row into consistent stone depths. Sort of tedious, but it seems easier to actually lay the stone.

Here is how far we got…170 stones out of the total 500 that we need to install. Looks so good, but it looks like so small now. We’ll see how far we get this weekend.

Does anyone have beautiful wood beams hidden under layers of paint? Want to do a ton of manual labor to reveal that beautiful wood? If you’re crazy like us, you might want to consider buying our Paintshaver. It was torturous work, but we are so happy with how our beams look in our house now. Click here to read about the Paintshaver tool that we used.

The Paintshaver needs a new home now!

Really, I didn’t run away. I promise. Although, I wouldn’t have minded a little runaway time to a beach. I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since January. We’ve been busy, though. Not nearly as busy as last year, but we’ve been trying to knock out small projects. I promise there are lots of posts in the queue now. Be sure we’re in your RSS reader because there is more coming!

It’s that time again…time for the yard work. Last year was all Phase 1 work…grading the yard, seeding the grass and building out the garden…mostly setting the framework for the yard. Phase 2 has officially started. We would have started earlier, but it’s been too wet! Not that we are complaining. We Coloradans know better than to complain about too much rain, right?

See this big pile of gray breeze? I’m about to haul it up to the backyard to the patio so we can finally set the patio? Thank goodness it’s only 5 cubic yards of gray breeze and not the 25 cubic yards of material that we had to deal with last summer!

Patio, you say? You mean the patio that seems like it will never get built? See this stack of sandstone pavers? Last year, I spent weeks hauling up this sandstone. I had to haul it one stone at a time OVER the front yard retaining wall, through the fence and then stack it up. Because our front yard is on the ground level and our backyard is basically a second story level. Yes, I did calculate it. That is 4 TONS of stone. Needless to say, I had buff arms last summer. So, I guess it’s time for manual labor again.

See this big empty space? That’s where the pavers are going to be installed? Who is installing them, you ask? Um, that would be us. Because like any good MCM loving peeps, we have big ole fancy Champagne taste and cheap fraternity party beer. It would be easier if the stones were standard depths, but they vary between 2″ deep and almost 4″ deep. So, I think we may have to drink a bit to get through this. I just have to remember that this will probably look really good when we’re done.

I’m happy to announce that I actually have a functioning kitchen! We made a big push before the New Year to get our drawers and cabinet fronts built and stained. We are still missing kickplates and the backsplash, but I’m hoping for this weekend.

I turned in our Colorado State Historic Tax Credit Application yesterday. I was so relieved to get that out of my hands! Now, we wait and see what the Colorado Historical Society will approve based on our restoration work.

Take a look at the collage. I swear, I love the light in our house, by I don’t know how to photograph with all of the light. So, just imagine better photos!

Didn’t Tim do a great job on building the cabinets? What did I do? I painted the sliders!