Portfolio | Chalet | Architecture, Interior Design and Construction in Denver, Colorado

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This renovation and addition breathe new life into an English Arts and Crafts house nestled on a quiet parkway in the Denver Country Club neighborhood. The setting recalls a time when the neighborhood was set apart from the dusty dirt streets of turn of the 19th century Denver. Many homes in this area took on the character of a country house, and this commission was no exception. Lush gardens surround the property; a private side entrance, with the rest of the house opening onto gardens beyond, set the tone for what would happen inside.

Drawing inspiration from quaint hotels in London and the lived-in warmth of the English country house, the collaboration of these interiors and the expression on the exterior slowly came to life. The result now remains in its country-like setting, for this young family to enjoy for generations.

Our Chester project is a transformative journey where a modest English-style home evolves into something entirely unique. What started as a simple renovation blossomed into a reimagined space, with repositioned staircases, altered ceiling heights, and even an expansion across the property line. Like a fairytale, the outcome was never predetermined, allowing the design to unfold organically. Now complete, Chester stands as a new beginning—a home ready for a young family to write their own story within its walls.

This home began with a couple’s vision for a home in the country: a place perched upon a hill, surrounded by fields of flowers in bloom and grasses swaying with the wind. At the heart of the design is a century-old cottonwood tree, its branches reaching over the house, visible from across the yard and woven into daily life. It is a home where a swing hangs from a sturdy limb, where grandchildren race barefoot through the grass, splash in the pool, and gather beneath the shade of the veranda on warm summer afternoons.

Inspired by the English countryside, Granmare brings a classic home to life for modern living. It was crafted as a home that would endure and be passed down through generations—to the very children and grandchildren who fill the home on weekends. Chalet Granmare has proven worthy of her name and takes great care of our clients and their family, and even me from time to time as I sit beneath that cottonwood with the clients and treasure what it is that we’ve created.

Chalet Granmare

Bristol’s story is one of peeling back the layers to discover a hidden gem. This home was located in one of Denver’s historic neighborhoods, which gave us the ability to refer to images of what the original building was before previous renovations. Bringing this structure back to its former glory became an obsession. Upon removing the stucco that had been applied in the 90s, we discovered the brick could not be restored. It was then that we drew inspiration from the Georgian architecture of Bristol and decided to introduce soft concrete plaster, which we carried to the interiors. One of the many changes we made was restoring the original location of the staircase, which had been altered in a previous renovation, and introduced many shades of polishing. Now when opening the door, thanks to this process of discovery and creative reinventing, one experiences what they might have experienced a century ago in this simple Georgian country home, nestled quietly in its historic neighborhood.

Our clients, long-time Denver residents, had a deep love for the East Coast and the open-air feel found in Newport and the villages along Cape Cod. They found a wonderful site in Cherry Hills Village where we could bring this inspiration to life. Starting with a flagpole greeting you in the front, a sight line guides you through the open door and beyond. The yard, filled with a carefully curated selection of flowers and ornamentals, is lovingly tended to from the cottage with an adjoining greenhouse.

During the design process, we were intoxicated by the significance of the Dutch gambrel roof. Our studies of Newport houses and the works of McKim, Mead, & White helped us appreciate the freedom of the American shingle style. It was this sense of freedom from which Felsted was born. Sitting on its parcel in Cherry Hills, this home’s sense of breeziness is an invitation. We anticipate generations of enjoyment within these walls.

Imagine a centuries-old town house somewhere in a rural northern European village, with the strength of solid masonry walls, exposed brick exteriors, plaster interiors, and a timber interior skeletal structure. Our vision was to take all these ingredients that make an old country house so endearing and breathe new life into the home by enlarging windows and door openings to enhance the connection between indoors and out.

We kept this vision close to heart through the entire process of architectural, construction, and interior design, with all team members staying true to the design intent along the way. What a treat it is to drive by Axel in the evenings, where the parlor and dining room artwork is beautifully illuminated, offering a glimpse of this transformed space to those fortunate observers on their evening strolls in the neighborhood.

A client purchased this original English Tudor house, which had since grown out of date. Bringing the house down to its bare bones let us rearrange the layout to foster better sightlines and communication throughout the house. To add on to the house while preserving its historical integrity, we extended thick walls, introduced new steel windows and doors, and brought in a skeletal structure with the expression of the beams.

The client’s worldly travel and Bohemian attitude brought an old world, Hollywood flare to the interiors. The use of colors, pastels, black, and white all work together to evoke simplicity while at the same time feeling very sophisticated. This was an experiment in materiality, and an experiment that we greatly enjoyed.

The idea of this house started with a site visit and a drawing in the dirt with a stick that happened to be laying around. As if the stick knew what needed to be there, that’s when this modern-day country house was born. With each articulation of the design, the story line became clearer. There was once a colonial revival style frontier house there, with a stable across the yard to the North.

The new story line tells the tale of the “original” colonial, masonry form where the front entry resides and the “stable” masonry form disguising the garage. In this tale, we took over to renovate the old farmstead and in doing so we made the window openings larger, simplified the detailing, and “added” the barn-like structure between the house and garage. The interiors of Jeritt follow suit with a gentle medley of old and new, historic and modern, playful and sophisticated, in a way that can’t exactly be described in style, only experienced. And what a great experience it is.

We first met our clients at their Greenwood Village home, where they were preparing to send their youngest child off to college. With their other children having already moved out, our clients were contemplating their next steps. They envisioned a new home that would inspire them and entice their adult children to return for holidays.

During our visit, we sat on their patio, where the true essence of their vision unfolded. The high line trail bordered the property, flanked by native cottonwoods and a few Colorado blue spruces. This serene setting offered a deep connection to nature, right in the heart of Greenwood Village.

Their existing home, a mass-produced "revival" house from the 70s and 80s, didn’t do the beautiful site justice. It was clear this location was just too good for a production floor plan, and the perfect place for them to reimagine another lease on life along the cottonwoods. It was agreed to raze the revival house and begin their journey back home.

This Landmark Structure was erected in 1922 and saw many additions and renovations over time. The design process began by peeling away all the layers to uncover the original footprint. Once uncovered, the original structure dictated the scale of the addition, telling the story from the outside and guiding the interior flow.

The composition resulted in Mevrou being composed of two volumes: a strong, single form of concrete plastered walls remaining from the original, more formal structure, contrasted by the exposed brick form of the new addition. New details, such as the fireplace mantel, were based on features original to the home that were lost during its lifetime of renovations. The original and new structures melding seamlessly together tell Mevrou’s long story, and make it a beautiful home to continue crafting the tale.

The inspiration for Thea was drawn from the villages on the outskirts of London, extending out into the English countryside. A lot in Hilltop provided a blank slate where we could bring the charm of the English countryside to the front range of Colorado. The interiors are a marriage of classical English and early American colonial styles, with a fresh twist that invites the freedom of contemporary furnishings without losing the sense of history. A gentle indoor-outdoor relationship, inviting the western breeze to flow through open doors and windows, is created between nearly every room on the main floor. The materiality was discovered by swooning over neighborhoods in London and Notting Hill. The combination of red brick, white windows, and tile roof brought the vision to life, and how lucky are we to travel to London every Wednesday afternoon.

Perched atop a berm in Denver’s Washington Park Neighborhood, the design idea for this house was to create a “Cotswold Cottage” that would blend seamlessly into the neighborhood. In a neighborhood not necessarily known for its Cotswold style architecture or heavy use of limestone, our work was set out for us. We decided to create a building that would predate the 1920s and 1930s era bungalows that are prominent in the area.

To write this home’s story, we knew we needed to source a local, rubble sandstone whose vein can be seen when traveling just about anywhere along the front range of Colorado and New Mexico. Together with this native stone, the steep pitched roof lines and clay roof tiles seen in the villages of the Cotswold’s come together to craft an homage to an early homestead where materials were selected from the local hillside and placed to form the walls of this little cottage named Aldwyn.

Chalet is a full-service interior design, architecture and construction firm in Denver, Colorado serving the Denver Metro area and beyond.

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