{"id":2443953,"date":"2019-05-08T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=305543"},"modified":"2019-05-08T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T03:00:00","slug":"aspen-princess-go-with-your-gut-not-the-trends-with-a-remodel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-princess-go-with-your-gut-not-the-trends-with-a-remodel\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Princess: Go with your gut, not the trends, with a remodel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI want a mine shaft elevator,\u201d Ryan says, animated with excitement. \u201cYou know, with the timbers and the tower and the whole thing. It\u2019s going to be awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan is one of these people who will invent his own terminology to describe the wild thoughts that ping-pong around in his brain. If you think of the mind as a calm lake during meditation, I imagine the inside of Ryan\u2019s head looks more like a pinball machine, with blinking lights and loud noises and lots of dinging sounds.<\/p>\n

He thinks it\u2019s funny to purposely misuse certain words or create new ones just because he knows I will correct him. You would think that after almost 10 years together I would know better, but I still fall for it almost every single time. It\u2019s the editor in me. I can\u2019t help it. It\u2019s like a reflex.<\/p>\n

Ryan calls the property below our house along Frying Pan Road \u201cThe Bottom 40\u201d because it\u2019s kind of just a flat lot with nothing on it, save what we can create in our imagination. (Me: a writing studio and library overlooking the river. Ryan: a motocross track.)<\/p>\n

I guess I shouldn\u2019t be surprised, then, that the \u201cmine shaft elevator\u201d is the sole item on Ryan\u2019s wish list for our A-Frame remodel. The crazy part is, I think it actually might happen. With our steep lot and a front door that is 17 steps below the driveway, it actually makes sense to install some kind of industrial lift that would make it that much easier to transport people and their stuff up and down. It would require a lot less maintenance than those damn stairs, which are wood and constantly getting hammered by sun and snow. Plus, it would make for a pretty dramatic entrance, one that would either excite our guests or totally freak them out.<\/p>\n

Ryan is not at all concerned about the things I lay awake at night thinking about, stuff like countertop materials and kitchen cabinet finishes and creative tile layout for the master bathroom.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just that I\u2019ve been writing a lot about home design lately, covering everything from multi-million-dollar homes in Aspen and big ranches in Old Snowmass to a vintage Airstream. I\u2019ve been able to interview architects, interior designers, general contractors and people who specialize in smart homes and energy efficiency. I even attended a seminar on affordable green building at the site of the new ACES Urban Farmhouse in Carbondale where I learned about shallow slab frost protection foundation and what a HERS rating is. I gotta say, now that I drive a hybrid car and have experienced how fulfilling it is to make that shift toward energy conservation, it makes total sense that you would want to update your house to make it as energy efficient as possible. And, like the people at CORE will tell you, there are a lot of financial incentives as well, which always gets people\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also been talking to friends who are in the business of renovating homes and flipping them, so they have an incentive to stay within a budget. My friend Susan wants to get her general contractor\u2019s license even though she is a lawyer and a real estate broker because she said, \u201cI want to learn this and understand it.\u201d I have another girlfriend who has a degree in construction management and has worked in almost every facet of home building there is over the past 20 years. She recently got her real estate license, so she could do her own deals, selling the homes she purchased and renovated herself and making commission to boot. Then I met a woman who general contracted the renovation of her home and learned so much in the process she\u2019s considering starting a consulting business to help people navigate the pitfalls that is home building in this valley. These ladies take DIY to the next level. That really made an impression on me. This stuff isn\u2019t rocket science, and knowledge is power.<\/p>\n

One thing I learned writing about all these different properties is that I\u2019m drawn to spaces that have character and projects that were limited to an existing footprint and had to work within certain perimeters as opposed to a home that was built from the ground up on an unlimited budget. At the end of the day, I was more interested in vintage camper than mountain modern. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that hard to create a beautiful home when you have millions of dollars and a team of top-notch professionals working for you. And those homes, while aesthetically beautiful and impressive, don\u2019t captivate me. Would I want to live in one? Hell yes. But that\u2019s not the point I\u2019m getting at here.<\/p>\n

I once interviewed the world-renowned architect Chad Oppenheim about his home in Aspen, a cabin on Red Mountain he\u2019d remodeled. He stuck with the original footprint. The new design, while insanely breathtaking, also yielded unconventional spaces filled with odd angles and funky configurations like a cozy, small kitchen with low wood paneled ceilings and a bunk room with a wall-to-wall mattress and fur blankets. That conversation validated something for me: that I should always follow my instincts and not get sucked into the current trends.<\/p>\n

It also made me realize that the handful of professionals we consulted about our house who told us to tear it down and start over were missing that big something; my vision to take these funky spaces and use them as a starting point, not an end point. My goal is to preserve the spirit and history of the A-Frame cabin, for which Ryan\u2019s mine shaft elevator will be just perfect. We have nowhere to go but up.<\/p>\n

The Princess misses her pug. Email your love to alisonmargo@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI want a mine shaft elevator,\u201d Ryan says, animated with excitement. \u201cYou know, with the timbers and the tower and the whole thing. It\u2019s going to be awesome.\u201d Ryan is one of these people who will invent his own terminology to describe the wild thoughts that ping-pong around in his brain. If you think of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-03 23:08:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}