A study in contrast

1924 bungalow opens its glass walls to modern living

By Nancy Milligan , Special to the Rocky

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Photo by Ron Faleide

Architect Ron Faleide's remodeled Washington Park bungalo.

An award-winning remodel embraces the past with a fresh style of contemporary living.

Architect Ron Faleide likens the Washington Park bungalow he remodeled for his family to a geode.

"The house is old and crusty on the outside and bright, colorful and crystalline on the inside," he says of the home, which earned a 2007 Architects' Choice Award.

The stunning contrasts don't end there. The house is at once dark and light, rough and sleek, historic and contemporary. It has expansive spaces for gathering and cozy spaces for retreating.

"There are so many different places to go now, to play music, to create art, to play pool," says Ellin Rosenthal, Faleide's wife and marketing director of his Denver firm, Faleide Architects.

The couple bought the 1,000-square-foot Craftsman bungalow in 1994 and lived there for almost 10 years before embarking on a renovation that took two years to complete.

"The house was small and dark, with no room for storage," says Rosenthal. "The whole remodel started because I wanted a pantry and more closets."

Their 11-year-old son, Jaren, adds, "My dad wanted to spin around in a room without hitting anything."

Faleide approached the remodel not in terms of square footage and rooms but in terms of what he calls "the poetry of architecture," or how it feels to live in a house.

"A driving factor was to create two kinds of spaces: indoor/outdoor rooms (the new great room and kitchen) and an outdoor room (the courtyard)," he says. "We wanted to create a modern sensibility that would never feel dated."

The architect preserved parts of the 1924 bungalow, expanding it with a glass-lined addition and a new second story. "I just couldn't let the old house go. Once scraped, you've erased history," he says. Instead, he created a dialogue between the past and the present, "preserving the integrity of both yet producing something new."

If you look carefully, you'll see the outline of the old brick chimney within the new chimney, an archway echoing the past, new floorboards marking where old walls once stood.

One exterior wall of the bungalow was removed and a 22-foot-tall glass addition was added to the side of the house to keep the front elevation in scale with surrounding homes in the neighborhood. The addition incorporates new space as well as the original kitchen and dining room. It connects to the former living room, now a cozy annex, and opens to a new second floor that comprises two bedroom/bath suites and a lofty bridge that overlooks the space.

The great room, which is flooded with light, is designed to offer dramatic connections to nature, from the sweep of the tall blue spruce in the front yard to clouds and night stars visible through the high windows. A southern exposure provides passive solar heat that's diverted to the upstairs bedrooms.

There's a sculptural quality to the angular architecture, which the homeowners emphasized with bright spots of color. A yellow wall directs visitors to the new entry outside and reappears inside to lead the eye along the length of the house. Purple accent walls under and behind the bridge pop out, which help define the architecture, Faleide says.

A few steps down from the great room, a 32-foot-long kitchen fulfills Rosenthal's desire for a pantry and storage space. Custom mahogany cabinets and stainless-steel countertops reflect the sleek, clean lines that define the remodel. Generous windows and sliding glass doors allow light to flow unobstructed through the space. When opened up completely, one wall of sliding doors disappears to create a seamless connection to the outdoor courtyard and lap pool.

With a standard double lot measuring 50 by 125 feet, Faleide emphasized the east-west orientation of the house and made use of the entire lot.

"The house reaches out to the street in front and all the way back to the alley, much the way Denver reaches from the mountains to the plains," says Faleide, who oriented the rooms, architecture and even the furniture arrangements to carry out the east-west flow.

The house has a timeless quality, allowing the homeowners to move from modern, open gathering spaces to more intimate original rooms.

"I need to get away from the world every once in a while, and we have spaces to do that," says Rosenthal, who also notes how the house has opened up her perspective. "We entertain more now. The house brought out a more extroverted side of me that I didn't know I had."

Details

* What: 1924 Craftsman bungalow- turned-contemporary

* Size: 3,000 square feet (plus 900-square- foot finished basement)

* Purchase price: $196,000 in 1994

* Remodeling cost: $550,000 including pool and landscaping

Show stopper

The Faleide/Rosenthal home has generated a lot of interest and two prestigious awards:

* 2007 Architect's Choice Award, sponsored by the Denver chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the city and county of Denver and the Rocky Mountain News.

* 2007 Mayor's Design Award, which recognizes well-designed projects throughout Denver neighborhoods.

* The home will be featured on the East Washington Park Home Tour benefiting Steele Elementary School, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 10. Information is available at steelepta.org; 303-282-5832.

Material choices

The nature and choice of materials played a major role in the design of the house:

* Outside:

The exterior materials are all in a raw state designed to weather beautifully over the years, complementing the aged patina of the original brick. They include: poured concrete, dark gray concrete boards, cedar planks, rusted steel beams.

* Inside:

Some exterior materials transitioned indoors as well, such as the rusted steel beams in the great room and concrete floors in the kitchen. Other indoor finishes include: original oak floors, steel and Brazilian redwood stairs, bamboo floors, maple stairs, mahogany cabinets, raw steel railings and bar top.

Forces of nature

To create vitality in his designs, architect Ron Faleide incorporates the four basic elements:

* Earth is represented by the brick, wood, metal and concrete that give solidity to the house.

* Wind is the openness to the sky in the glass-walled great room, the operable skylights upstairs, the sliding-glass doors that open the entire kitchen to the outdoor courtyard and deck.

* Fire is more than the original brick fireplaces; it is the modern hearth in the kitchen where people gather and the flame-patterned grain of rich mahogany wood cabinets.

Water comes into play with the lap pool/water feature in the courtyard (at left), the rain that shimmers down glass walls, the oversize master bath and the sculptural sinks and faucets throughout.