LAKEWOOD — Donna Ciccarelli knew what she wanted. This cowgirl needed a range to roam but wanted proximity to city conveniences. The search for her dream home spanned years and miles until she found the best of both worlds.
She needed land for her horses, “but when you live in the country, everything is so far away. I still wanted to be two blocks from a Safeway,” says Ciccarelli, 71.
A rundown farmhouse with an old barn and riding arena was the unlikely answer to her house-hunting dream.
The home she chose, near West Sixth Avenue and Kipling Street, helped blend her love of all things Southwestern with her need for modern convenience. The house, built in 1936, is on 3 acres purported to be the original practice grounds for the Westernaires mounted precision drill team. (The drill team will perform at National Western Stock Show & Rodeo events starting Friday.)
Growing up in Edgewater, Ciccarelli was a tomboy who believed she’d been an Indian in a previous life because of her love of riding, hunting and shooting with her dad.
For the renovation, she painstakingly handpicked custom furnishings and accessories along a travel trail from Pueblo to Albuquerque.
The 4,100-square-foot home showcases her perserverance in creating a place that fits her lifestyle and her roots.
“I love to see that kind of initiative in a client,” says designer Marjie Goode who consulted Ciccarelli on her design choices and kitchen remodel. “She knew the look she wanted, and she did all the groundwork and the research to achieve that look. Clients don’t often have that kind of confidence moving forward in design.”
The Ciccarellis spent five years living in the cramped caretakers’ home during the remodel. Renovations included upgrading the dilapidated exterior of the home, landscaping, removing truckloads of barbed wire and replacing it with fencing, changing doors and windows, raising the ceiling, reroofing the barn and upgrading the home’s heating system.
They invested $350,000 in the property, doubling the house’s size by adding a master suite. The exterior of the house was stuccoed, and a red tile roof now graces it. Inside, they raised the home’s ceiling, creating a new octagonal shape, and knocked down walls, creating a more open floor plan. The project was completed in 2007.
A black wrought-iron fence, a nameplate reading “Bei Cavalli” (beautiful horses in Italian, to honor her husband’s heritage) and a front yard totem pole carved in the shape of a bear and two Indians welcome visitors to this Spanish-style country hacienda.
Ciccarelli found many of her decorating ideas at the Parade of Homes in Sante Fe and Albuquerque. As she traveled, she took photos of details she loved and scaled them to fit her home. Among her discoveries: cut-in wall niches to display her extensive American Indian art collection, a wall of crosses, built-in space-saving closet dressers, and kiva fireplaces with brass inlets to warm her kitchen and master bedroom. Arched ceilings she saw in a builder’s magazine became the inspiration for the double-arched doors and arched ceiling leading to her master suite.
Upholstered chairs came from a Western store she discovered in Pueblo. Dining room rugs were purchased at the Merchandise Mart. Kitchen cabinets were special-ordered from Loveland, and a discarded oxbow from a Broomfield farm holds her copper pots and pans.
“Everywhere we went she had us dragging back pieces to bring for the home,” says Tony Ciccarelli, 73, who co-owns the Columbine Meadows Shopping Center in Broomfield with his wife. “I’d ask her if she was nuts or what? And why couldn’t we get these things locally?”
In addition to items collected while traveling, Donna Ciccarelli also took the following design advice to heart when she read it in a magazine: Decorate with what you have. This explains why saddles are used as light fixtures above her dining table and in her living room. And why a horse harness was transformed into a bathroom mirror, while a spear she made with Indian arrowheads is used as a curtain rod.
The home’s theme is found throughout the dwelling and relates to her life’s work, showing and racing horses with her husband, children and grandchildren. For example, running horses are found carved into embellishments on the leather couch, on electrical switch plates, on kitchen cabinet pulls and painted on bathroom tiles.
Whimsical features such as a whiskey-barrel bathroom sink, window valances made of riverbed willow, tractor seat patio furniture and pistols towel and toilet-paper holders add Western flair.
Elmira Stove Works custom-built antique appliances, retro refrigerators and 1850 reproduction cookstoves with modern features hint at who the Ciccarellis are: a perfect blend of old and new, cowgirl and urban dweller.
“I am proof that you can design a comfortable home to your tastes without a lot of expense,” she says, walking toward the fence where her Arabian horses wait to be fed.
Sheba R. Wheeler: 303-954-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com.
