Yarn House Story

When I first moved here, I lived in the older part of town, near the university campus and within walking distance of my job in the downtown area.  The one drawback was that I lived in a basement apartment, which was a little too dark and cave-like for me.  So after I sold my house in Denver, I was easily seduced by new construction with it’s bright and sunny interiors and ended up buying a house in a suburban-type area on the south side of town.  After living there for several years, I knew that I wanted to find my way back to the part of town where the houses are older and laid-out on tree-lined streets.  The neighborhoods and the homes there have a character with which I feel most comfortable.

On my way home from work one day, in 2005, I saw a sign pointing to a little house for sale on a side street that was tucked back behind a picket fence and partly hidden by a couple of aspens, an oak, and a plum tree.  The house called to me and I ended up buying it, sold the “suburban” house, and moved to Old Town.  Since then, I worked with an architect and contractor to completely gut and remodel the inside of the house, to create a beautiful, perfect little place.  The house sits on a very small lot on an alley, and there was a rental house on the corner lot to the south.  These two properties may initially have been intended as a single lot.

I always thought that if the rental house was put on the market, I should seriously consider purchasing it, tho I really didn’t think the owners would be selling anytime soon.  One day in 2008, I came home from teaching a knitting lesson to find a For Sale sign on the corner lot.  After getting out of my car, I think I stood with my mouth hanging open – dumbfounded when a neighbor came out to discuss this development with me.  I remembered my thought about buying the property and indeed, I did just that.

After the tenants moved out, I didn’t rent it again, since it was in need of serious repairs, and I was deciding what I wanted to do with it.  While I considered the options, I started storing some of my stash of yarn in the little house.  As more and more yarn made it’s way into the house, my knitting friends started teasing me about having bought a house just for my stash, and in response to their taunts, I started calling it the “Yarn House.”

I did think about using the house for knitting lessons – as a studio, but the property is in a historic area that is zoned only for single-family homes.  It was then that I began thinking about demolishing the existing house and rebuilding. The little “Yarn House” was starting to fall apart.

The little house has since been replaced by a new home designed by the same architect and built by the same contractor who I had used for the previous remodel. I sold the house on the alley and moved into the house that replaced the “Yarn House” in 2010 and it has been become a wonderful home.