From phone booth to waterfalls, home filled with creativity

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

The home of Kim and Scott Milewski is remarkable in many ways. It's remarkable in its design and the dozens of details that make it cozy and interesting. It's even more remarkable that the couple have done a good deal of the work themselves on the 5,800-square-foot home.

The Milewski residence, located in the Hearthfire subdivision near Richards Lake, is on this year's Kitchen Kaper Home Tour scheduled for April 30. The Fort Collins Service League, which organizes the tour, raises about $60,000 each year from the event for Foothills Gateway, a nonprofit facility that cares for people with developmental disabilities. This year marks the tour's 25th anniversary and the league will feature six distinctive homes in the area, four of them located on Douglas Road and north.

The Milewskis call the style of their home "Colorado timber frame," and the living area of the home definitely has a Western lodge flavor. Metal moose prints lead up to the front door, pinecones festoon the stair railing and a large antler chandelier hangs over the dining room table. The tabletop itself is a huge mesquite door, salvaged from Old Mexico.

It doesn't take long to realize there's a lot of creativity - and courage - displayed in this home. The Milewskis installed the slate floor themselves, learning how to run a big tile saw to cut the odd-shaped pieces. They also did the marble-topped counters themselves.

Several of the walls look like the inside of a log home. Kim said she wanted to texture and paint the drywall to create the log effect, and both the drywaller and Scott told her she was nuts. "Just trust me, honey," she told her husband, and the final effect looks just like pine. The drywaller later told her husband she really deserved a dinner out.

Kim took on several other tasks that would have seemed daunting to many. She was the mason for the stone fireplace, and she took on faux painting with a fervor. A hair stylist by trade, Kim's creative bent can be seen in every nook and cranny of the home. Scott is a master plumber, and he installed radiant, hot water floor heat throughout the house.

This is the fourth house the Milewskis have designed and built from the ground up. They actually built the garage first, with a charming 1,700-square-foot apartment above it. They lived in the apartment for three years before starting on the big house, which they moved into last fall. With three daughters, two in college, they figure family will eventually use the apartment, but for now it's a great hangout for houseguests.

Touring the Milewski home provides lots of surprises. There are waterfalls over two fireplaces, a sandstone-topped island in the kitchen and a cozy "hearth room" off the kitchen, which could entice many a cook away from the stove. For entertaining, the family has a game room in the basement and a wet bar in the living room, with window service to the patio. A Taos drum serves as a coffee table, adding to the Western flavor. In one bathroom, Kim used cottonwood leaves to imprint an artsy design on the walls, and the theatre room boasts a real, old-fashioned phone booth.

Many more interesting details fill the Milewski home, but they are best left for the tour.