The Dwell Factor

Anybody involved with modern residential is probably going to know about Dwell magazine. The magazine is a great inspiration to us, although so many of the homes they feature are way out of our league. We still fight over who gets the read the issue first.

Dwell has included modern prefab design in numerous issues. The idea has been around for a very long time (and had many fits and starts), but to their credit, what they spearheaded has really taken off. We both find modern prefab very intriguing, and we’ve pursued it as a viable alternative to a custom site built home. We met Charlie Lazor (FlatPak) and others from Empyream and discovered that a prefab house costs around $250-300 SF. And since I am an architect, naturally I really wanted to design the home :-)

Freak Out Week

We hadn’t really planned on building a new house so soon. After a number of small to medium renovations, a new house still felt like a pipe dream. How in the world would we make the numbers work? The price for the lot was not cheap, although it was typical for land value in metro Denver. How could we afford to build anything that resembled a custom quality modern home? Each day was a roller coast ride of emotion..Should we do it? Can we do it? After meeting with various banks we found a creative way to finance the project.

Contractor Discussions

We started talking to a few contractors around town, and each had a different take on the project. We explained that although we wanted to build a new house, it would be small by Denver standards (2400 sf), and simple and modern. One mentioned that he didn’t think it’s possible to build a custom home for under $200 a square foot. Another stated that $150 is totally doable. Time will tell.

The Discovery

We had been looking for a lot in the Platt Park neighborhood of Denver. Although only a few minutes from our current home, this particular neighborhood really appealed to us because of its access to a small main street filled with restaurants, coffee houses and boutiques, as well as its proximity to the new light rail station two blocks away. Our realtor found a lot with a tiny run down house on it... going on the market the next day.  We scrambled and ended up putting down earnest money that same day.  Then we proceeded to freak out!  The house is in the photo above, it’s just covered with a lot of vines...