5280 Home – August 2019

continued

Was the house itself so idyllic when

you bought it?

The house was built in the 1970s and was

really out of date, but it had potential. The

house is very square, and it’s three stories

with a wraparound porch, plus a detached

garage with this awesome bonus room up

above it, which was already renovated with

an entire bedroom and bathroom. The

house had little windows, but this beauti-

ful view, and so we thought, “Gosh, if we

put picture windows in with these aspen

trees, it would have such a pretty view, and

we’d actually be able to make this place

look more modern!” There was something

clearly charming about it, yet it needed

so much work—even more than we knew

we were getting into.

Did you plan to do the work yourselves?

There’s definitely some stuff that we

D.I.Y.’ed, but we quickly realized we would

need a contractor. Unfortunately, our first

contractor got us in quite a bit of trouble:

He ripped out stabilizing walls without the

proper permits. We were neck deep before

we realized there was no way out. We

brought in other contractors and basically

had to redo everything. We gutted this

house from the inside out, pretty much.

Nightmare! Were there any silver linings?

Of course, it was costing way more [than

we had expected] and taking a little longer,

so we decided to get creative with some

stuff—for example, our staircase, which

was an old, dark eyesore right when you

opened the front door. We were able to

expand it a little bit and bring it up to date,

Mountain Aerie

continued

Was the house itself so idyllic when

you bought it?

The house was built in the 1970s and was

really out of date, but it had potential. The

house is very square, and it’s three stories

with a wraparound porch, plus a detached

garage with this awesome bonus room up

above it, which was already renovated with

an entire bedroom and bathroom. The

house had little windows, but this beauti-

ful view, and so we thought, “Gosh, if we

put picture windows in with these aspen

trees, it would have such a pretty view, and

we’d actually be able to make this place

look more modern!” There was something

clearly charming about it, yet it needed

so much work—even more than we knew

we were getting into.

Did you plan to do the work yourselves?

There’s definitely some stuff that we

D.I.Y.’ed, but we quickly realized we would

need a contractor. Unfortunately, our first

contractor got us in quite a bit of trouble:

He ripped out stabilizing walls without the

proper permits. We were neck deep before

we realized there was no way out. We

brought in other contractors and basically

had to redo everything. We gutted this

house from the inside out, pretty much.

Nightmare! Were there any silver linings?

Of course, it was costing way more [than

we had expected] and taking a little longer,

so we decided to get creative with some

stuff—for example, our staircase, which

was an old, dark eyesore right when you

opened the front door. We were able to

expand it a little bit and bring it up to date,

Mountain Aerie