by Furnishly | Jun 30, 2022 | Design Inspiration, Style
There’s no need to book a flight to northern Spain to revel in glorious mosaic architecture — one week in this Denver loft and you’ll be saying Barthelona like a regular Catalonian (or at least a zealous study abroad student). The Colorado home was inspired by Antoni Gaudí, the architect whose Catalan Modernism is on stunning display in buildings like La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell.
You can see the influence in the carved wooden benches and shelves that line the entryway of this luxury condo, accented by swooping orange, red, and gray collages of tile. The mosaic touches carry throughout the open loft, splashing along the kitchen and across the living room walls.
It’s not too flashy for daily life, though — hardwood floors (with radiant heating), exposed brick walls, and beamed ceilings that stretch 12 feet high all work together to create a natural palette. As a sustainable bonus, the vast majority of the home’s materials are reclaimed: The oak floors once belonged to a basketball court, for example, and the massive cottonwood kitchen countertop is 100 years old.
The rest of the features you really just have to see to believe, like the tobacco pipe-like fixture hanging in the kitchen, the miniature statues that hold up some shelves, and the cavernesque bathroom covered in mosaics. If you’d like to move in exactly as the staging photos show the home, you can opt to purchase the intricate, custom made furniture that populates the place.
Are you on the house hunt, or just the type of person who loves browsing real estate listings, even when you’re not in the market for a new home? Property Crush is a column where we feature actual real estate listings that get the Apartment Therapy seal of approval in regards to style (we haven’t done home inspections or anything, so don’t sue us). Know of a great house on the market? Email the listing to repitches@apartmenttherapy.com.
by Furnishly | Nov 15, 2021 | Design Inspiration, Style
The secret’s out about Denver. The Mile High City (it’s called that because the elevation there is 5,280 feet) is a launching pad for all kinds of weekend adventures — skiing, hiking, mountain biking, white-water rafting, and exploring the historical remnants of boom-town mining camps turned ghost towns. It’s got a lot of great beer, not to mention the Beer Spa. There are also pro sports teams, an exciting restaurant scene, cool art districts, and a whole lot more.
In short, Denver is very cool*. (*I’m biased; I live in the area, but I’m sure the more than 115,000 people who have moved to Denver in the last decade would also agree). Denver’s population has indeed surged, growing 19.2 percent between 2010 and 2020. And, not surprisingly, the cost of living has gone up here, too.
So, if you’re drawn to Denver because of its amenities and its proximity to the mountains, but find the prices to be a little too high, turn your attention to Aurora. A suburb to the east, Aurora’s population is 370,000 — about half that of Denver. Median home prices are $460,000, which is $100,000 less than in Denver. Median monthly rent is $1,563, a couple hundred dollars cheaper than Denver, according to figures from RentCafé. Aurora also boasts 8,000 acres of open space, and residents can still get to the foothills in under an hour.
“Aurora has almost the same accessibility to the things that drive people to Denver, but with a more affordable price tag,” says Tianna Matheja, a Colorado realtor with RE/MAX Leaders & the Tamborra Team. She says Aurora also has more accessible parking, larger lot sizes for homes, and lots of wide-open spaces.
As the Denver metro area continues to build its light rail system, living in the suburbs of the city continues to grow in appeal, says Carla Ferreira, director of onsite development at The Aurora Highlands, a 3,700 master-planned community that, upon completion, will be one of the Denver metro region’s largest mix-used, master planned communities with four schools, 21 miles of trails, and 500 acres of parks and open space.
Aurora recently landed at number 36 on Livability’s list of the 100 Best Places to Live, ranking high in the demographics category as a minority-majority city, with a diverse population of Latino, African-American, Asian, and foreign-born residents.
Frequent travelers will appreciate the suburb’s proximity to Denver International Airport. Aurora also has an established food and beverage scene with 250 ethnic restaurants, plus breweries, including Lady Justice Brewing Company, a Latina-founded, queer-and-woman owned brewery that donates thousands of dollars to local charities.
My own friend group leaves Denver behind for frequent dinners and brunches at Annette, which serves wood-fired fare and is led by James Beard semi-finalist Caroline Glover. The restaurant is among the 50 some Colorado businesses that make up the Stanley Marketplace.
Another perk of moving to Aurora? You’ll have a cool nextdoor neighbor, Denver, to the west.
by Furnishly | Aug 31, 2021 | Design Inspiration, Style
Nearly every time I make a day trip to Boulder, I feel a magnetic pull to take a detour and slowly creep past the two-story duplex I lived in when I was a student at the University of Colorado. The hunter-green fence that wraps around the patio and the giant oak tree shading the front lawn are still there, but, depending on the year, I glean new clues about who calls this special place “home” — things like posters displayed in the windows, a wobbly beer pong table in the front yard, or, mostly recently, bird feeders and twinkle lights.
Really, there’s an art to driving past your old home — from bracing for the myriad emotions that bubble up to somehow getting lucky and being invited inside for a tour.
My trips in Boulder are somewhat voyeuristic excursions. Driving past my college home summons powerful memories, happy and sad, of some of the most formative two years of my life.
It was in my basement apartment in Boulder where I got the call that I was hired at a local newspaper, which would launch my journalism career. It was under the tree that I cried for hours when I found out my parents would, in fact, be divorcing, fracturing our little three-person family. It was also the setting of some of my fondest memories of my dad not long before his terminal cancer diagnosis. He moved me in and out, and, on my 21st birthday, organized a surprise party (with a keg hiding in the shower!) and taught me a lesson in diplomacy. (He let my neighbors know we’d be celebrating until 10 p.m. then heading to the bars — but if the noise levels were too loud to call me and, BTW, come by for cake and beer!)
Driving past an old home can indeed prompt us to remember many different experiences that we associate with living there, says Saba Harouni Lurie, LMFT, and the owner and founder of Take Root Therapy in Los Angeles. Sometimes the mismatched emotions can hit you all at once.
Harouni Lurie, for instance, lived in the same apartment for 10 years. She spent her early adulthood there while becoming the person she is today. She eventually outgrew the space when she got married and had a baby.
“I feel so much gratitude when I drive by, and I also feel longing and pain,” she says. “I miss the different versions of myself that lived there. I miss the experiences I had there.”
The key to taking this trip down memory lane, Harouni Lurie says, is to give yourself space to feel and honor those feelings as they come up. It’s that simple.
Curious if others feel that same draw to drive past previous homes, I recently posted on Facebook, asking my friends for their tales. One told me about how her son found himself picking up his homecoming date at a house her family had lived in for a decade. He asked to go inside and discovered his Silly Putty was still melted into his old bedroom carpet. Another friend said her brother-in-law went to his childhood home in New Jersey and the owners let him in. He ended up helping out in the garden he and his dad started when he was a kid.
Then there’s this success story: Perry White, the cofounder and editor of Wheelie Great, a cycling guide, took a family trip to where he grew up in Livonia, Michigan, and drove through his old neighborhood. As he pulled up to the curb across from his old house — the place he’d lived until he was 16 — he decided to take a photo. He posed in front of his former home with his kids while his wife snapped a quick picture.
“Just when we were doing so, the owners of the house were driving down the street and pulled into the driveway,” White says.
He was embarrassed at first. But the next thing he knew, he was invited in for a tour of the three-bedroom ranch, and his kids started playing in the backyard with the current homeowners’ children.
Maybe one day I’ll be invited to peek inside my old college apartment. But until then, I’ll honor the feelings I feel when I drive past it.
Do you have stories of touring or driving past your former home? Let us know in the comments.
