5280 Home magazine feature: Once More, With Feeling

Once More, With Feeling

Designed by William Lang (a Denver architect known best for the iconic Molly Brown House), this Victorian home had a red-brick exterior when it was built in 1898. The brick has since been covered with stucco and painted, but the original sandstone lintels were preserved.

Is it Victorian, or is it modern? This Congress Park house transcends both styles with an original update that celebrates the way old homes make us feel.

story by CHRISTINE DEORIO | photography by RAUL GARCIA | styling by KERRI COLE

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Once More, With Feeling

A new built-in bookcase, made by KTM Millwork of Englewood, displays books and mementos.

The iconic Eames lounge chair is from Design Within Reach.

hen Sam and J.B. Hochman bought their vintage Victorian home, it seemed like the only for-sale house in Congress Park big enough for their newly blended family, which includes five young daughters and one big dog.

The 4,000-square-foot home offered a master suite in the attic, five bedrooms on the second floor, and another bedroom in the basement. And though its stuccoed exterior lacked some of the magic of a classic 1890s Victorian, the home’s original interior details were intact, including finely crafted moldings and a grand staircase.

“We loved the bones,” Sam says—but that’s about all they admired. The original layout was a confusing warren of rooms, made more disorienting by a harsh combination of stark white walls and near-black wood trim, which framed every doorway.

The cramped, dated kitchen was cut off from the rest of the

Above: Light kitchen finishes—Statuarietto marble countertops and backsplash walls, European oak-veneer cabinets—mix with dark accents that include a hotrolled-steel hood and refrigerator door pulls (all custom made by builder Ryan Wither) and Mosa’s Terra Maestricht floor tile. A single, orange Birdie wall sconce from Foscarini adds just the right hit of color. Right: A steel-and-glass window—also built by Wither—and an industrial steel beam replace the dining room’s original loadbearing wall. The homeowners furnished the space with Crate & Barrel’s Basque Honey dining table, a set of bright orange dining chairs—replicas of Emeco’s iconic Navy Chair—and a trio of vintage tennis court lights. Opening spread, left: Architect Steven Perce used Benjamin Moore’s Wrought Iron paint color in a high-gloss finish “to pop the texture and profiles” of the staircase’s original woodwork, he says.

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Once More, With Feeling

The living room’s steel-andglass French doors separate the casual space from the turreted sitting room. By enclosing an opening between the living room and dining room, Perce created a space for Restoration Hardware’s roomy Cloud Track Arm sofa. A custom console, made from the same Querkus oak-veneer panels used on the kitchen cabinetry, was built by KTM Millwork. Homeowner Sam Hochman purchased the vintage Turkish rug at Azari Rug Gallery.

house, and when the couple set about renovating it, the seemingly straightforward project quickly took on a gigantic new scope.

Steven Perce, co-founder of architecture and interior design firm Bldg Collective, and builder Ryan Wither of Buildwell, had planned to remove the walls that separated the kitchen from the adjacent dining and living rooms, and steal some extra space from an unneeded back staircase. But as that project grew—the team discovered that the floor system was so uneven, they would have to install four helical piers in the basement to hold it up—Sam and J.B. decided they might as well address the rest of the dysfunctional floorplan too.

Seizing the opportunity to create a more logical flow, Perce closed off a large opening between the foyer and the turreted, front sitting room; that single move created a more defined entry, a cozier living space, and directed traffic back into the heart of the house. By enclosing an opening between the dining and living rooms, he created places for a built-in buffet on one side of the new wall and a sofa on the other.

As they removed openings, the team preserved the original moldings, which they used to accent new walls and doorways. By painting the walls and trim the same color, they emphasized the molding’s fine detail and craftsmanship. “Now you see the texture rather than just the color,” Perce says.

Texture plays an equally important role in other new finishes that have the qualities of materials used a century ago. “When people walk into old

Above: Sam chose Benjamin Moore’s “Raccoon Fur” paint for the sitting room’s walls (eggshell finish) and trim (high-gloss finish); the near-black color contrasts dramatically with the fireplace wall, which is clad with Ann Sacks’ dimensional Ogassian field tile in Japanese Geo. The custom, curved sofa and glass-topped coffee table are from Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, and the vintage rug is from Sarkisian’s Rugs & Fine Art. Right: The homeowners finished this bathroom themselves, using crisp white subway tile on the walls and hexagonal tile on the floors. A vintage rug, found at a local estate sale, adds a bold burst of color.

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homes, they experience this warmth and lived-in feel,” Perce says. “That’s what we were aiming for, rather than a particular style.” For example, Wither built the living room’s sleek glass-and-steel French doors just as a craftsman would have in the early 19th century, waxing (rather than painting) the hot-rolled steel to preserve its blemishes, and using a simple window putty to install the glass panes. Perce had the new oak floors coated with a natural oil finish “that will patina and wear where people walk,” he says, and for the kitchen, he designed cabinets with thick, wire-brushed-oak veneers.

A simplified and natural color palette, which ranges from light and bright in the living room to dark and moody in the adjacent sitting room, shows off modern-leaning furnishings—and a few unexpected design moves: a curved sofa that nests perfectly in a turret, a fireplace wall clad with modern, dimensional tile, and bright orange chairs at the dining table.

“What Steve did so well was help us keep the character of the old house but also modernize the space—but not in a cheesy, predictable way,” Sam says of the mix. “We have a unique family, and I think the house is just unconventional enough to fit us.”

Above: The renovated backyard includes a new in-ground pool, pergola-shaded sitting area, and contemporary back stoop that combines rough-cut cedar beams with a sleek steel canopy and support posts. A trio of concrete fire columns from Target illuminates the pool deck. Left: Sam and J.B. Hochman relax on the west-facing front porch’s roomy swing; canvas curtains protect the spot from the afternoon sun.

DESIGN PROS Architecture and interior design: Steven Perce, Bldg Collective Construction: Ryan Wither, Buildwell

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