Pueblo – Lisa Sisneros believed her husband’s obsession with the Denver Broncos was innocent enough – until she left him home alone years ago with a brush and orange and blue paint.
While she knew the orange shutters would be a harbinger of things to come, she never expected her north- side Pueblo home at 2810 High St. would become a tourist attraction, now that the Broncos are nearing the Super Bowl again.
“I was shocked at first but can’t say that I was surprised he’d go this far,” she said Monday, sitting in her living room amid the din of a 70-inch television flanked by Broncos memorabilia that took her husband, Ethan, 42, decades to collect.
Perhaps the white-, orange- and blue-trimmed home’s location along a bustling road leading to the state’s mental hospital is a fitting site for this fan’s fanaticism.
Ethan’s dream to have his own piece of Broncos lore started about 15 years ago. One day he painted over with white paint the ugly “Cleveland Browns-like” color of the house he has shared with his wife and four children. And with Lisa away visiting her aunt for the day, he figured he’d paint the shutters orange and the trim blue. Later, he’d go on and install a blue-tiled roof.
Today, a sign hangs above the front door proclaiming the house as “Invesco Field at 2810 Mile High Street.” The outside is covered with Broncos flags and emblems, a scoreboard that reflects weekly results and signs that say this is “apountry.”
The inside of the home is less gaudy than the outside but still features an impressive collection of Broncos memorabilia that includes paintings of John Elway, footballs from past playoff games, a series of playoff hats (including one ahead of its time that names this year’s team as the AFC champs) and his most prized possession, Elway’s semi-pro baseball card.
He even went through the trouble of knocking down a living-room wall to make room for the giant TV, which arrived just in time to watch the Broncos win Super Bowl XXXII in 1998.
“I grew up watching Craig Morton and just really got into the Broncos,” he says. “And one day I thought it would just be fun to paint my house this color but figured I’d better do it when the wife was away. She didn’t like it at first, but I think that it’s grown on her over the years.”
Ethan, who holds down two jobs – one behind the parts counter at a Ford dealership and the other delivering bundles of the hometown newspaper to carriers before dawn – never expected the kind of attention his home would receive.
Former Broncos receivers Mark Jackson and Rick Upchurch have visited the house, and they went away in disbelief at the distance some fans go.
Often, a random Raiders fan will drive by and shout an obscenity. Their children have sometimes been teased in school. And it took years for Lisa to grow accustomed to being known around town as the “woman from the Broncos house.”
As a consequence, the children have rebelled, naming the Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins as favored teams, and Lisa says she’ll watch the Broncos only when they’re winning.
“Oh, I’m a total fair-weather fan,” she says. “I still am not crazy about the house, but I let him do this and try real hard to be supportive.”
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-820-1537 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
