I finally read the very comprehensive guides that all Arapahoe Acres residents receive…who knew that we were eligible to apply for Colorado state preservation tax credits. We may possibly get 20% of the total renovation costs for eligible expenses. Yea! We’re trying to do all of the restoration on the existing house (see all of the stripping pics) in line with historical guidelines, so why not try to get a few tax credits. The application process is completely straightforward, but it does require full documentation of each FEATURE affected by the restoration:
- Had to describe the existing state of each feature
- Had to describe the proposed work and method of work to be done to each feature
- Had to describe the overall affect of the feature on the overall house
- Had to provide cross-referencing to multiple pictures that show the features and their current condition
- Had to provide the estimated cost of restoration for each feature.
And, then, I had to provide the same level of detail for the work that I’m doing that is NOT covered under the hsitoric credits. I almost missed this bullet in the application.
In the end, I had about 27 pages of text in a MS Word document and about 110 photographs cross-referenced. It took me about 20 hours of work to pull together the full application. I dropped the application off at the Colorado State Preservation Society last month and I just got the word.
We received a ONE page approval of our work. All of our proposed work on the existing hous was approved without exception. So relieved. We were going to do the work anyway, but it’s nice to get a little bit of money returned to us.
After we do the work, I’ll have 60 days to update the application with photos of the ACTUAL work completed.
