The Gold House: Becoming a Keeper of Stories
CHAPTER 1
The first night in this house, I could see my breath in the front room. It was the end of September, I'd just gotten the keys, and here's the fun part: the house had electricity but no heat. None. At 10,200 feet in Leadville, Colorado, September nights don't mess around. So there I was, wrapped in my warmest down jacket, hands around a mug of tea going cold way too fast, just listening. Old houses make noise. This one creaks, settles, sighs a little when the wind comes down off the mountain. It's 150 years old, and it has been standing here since miners were pulling silver and gold out of these hills. And I remember thinking, shivering in the middle of that room while I made frantic mental notes about getting a heating system installed IMMEDIATELY… I don't own this house. I'm just the one holding it right now.
That thought changed everything about how I've approached this renovation.
I've been a designer for over twenty years, and my default is clean, modern, contemporary. Crisp lines. Intentional everything. So when I went looking for a home here, everyone assumed I'd want new construction, a blank slate. Nope. I wanted a house with character. A house that could hold all the stories that came before it, honor those stories, and let me build my own within it. This one has a floor plan that makes no sense in the best way (Leadville houses are famous for this), it needed real work but not a full gut, and it sits on two lots, which means I get to design the inside AND the outside. When I love a project, I'm all in, and I was all in before I finished the first walkthrough.
So. Why "the Gold House"?
The aspens named it, honestly. I bought this house at the very end of September, and every aspen surrounding it had turned that deep, glowing gold that only lasts a couple of weeks up here. The house was literally standing inside a ring of gold the first time it was mine. And the more I sat with the name, the more it kept braiding together: this is a mining town, and gold is in the soil here, literally and historically. And I've always been drawn to warm golds, yellows, and oranges… colors that feel like late-afternoon light. The house basically named itself. I just agreed.
Here's what I want you to know about this series: it will not be a highlight reel.
I'm living in this house while I renovate it, working room by room, doing a huge amount of the manual labor myself. Which means mistakes. SO many mistakes. Paint I had to redo. Projects I wanted to quit at 9pm on a Tuesday, covered in dust, questioning my life choices. But I coach endurance athletes and I run long distances in these mountains, and if that's taught me anything, it's this: the miles you want to quit are usually the ones that change you. Every project I've pushed through in this house, I've been grateful for on the other side. Every single one.
The other thing this house is teaching me is patience. I want it done yesterday. The house does not care. Old homes move at their own pace, and honestly, that's been the deeper gift… learning that patient beats perfect, that restraint is a design decision, that bringing a home back to life (a home the last few owners didn't love very well) is slow, sweaty, sacred work.
So I'll be sharing it all here, room by room. The finished foyer (up first!). The refinished floors. The wildflower meadow I'm growing from hand-collected seed. The wins, the redos, the dust.
Every space tells a story. This one has 150 years of them, and I get to add mine.
I'm so glad you're here for it.
