Before & After

Upon entering this light and airy home in the heart of Vail, it is difficult to believe it ever resembled the heavy, dark space the “before” photos reveal.

After living in Aspen for more than 20 years, Cecil and Noelle Hernandez decided that they wanted to move to the mountain town’s historic West End. Noelle Hernandez had her sights set on a home that was built in the mid-eighties and had been on the market for quite some time. “It looked so sad and neglected,” says Hernandez, a design consultant and owner of Aspen-based NCH Design. “Cecil took one look and hated it, but I was already dissecting it and deciding what I wanted to do with it.”

Wayne and Linda Lee had searched for a home for more than a year, but when they discovered a 1950s home for sale near Chautauqua Park in Boulder the connection was instant.

“It felt like a happy house,” Linda says. “The home’s modernist design brought back all the things we loved from the fifties and sixties.”

This Queen Anne was never supposed to go through a total renovation. In fact, it wasn’t supposed to be a project at all.

The owners, an out-of-state couple who wanted a second home in Boulder to be near their grandkids, initially commissioned designers Andrew and Gayle McArthur of Boulder-based Byrnes & Company to renovate the condo the couple had just purchased.