With ACI, we have been working on a very interesting project in South Boulder.  The scope of work is an interior-only renovation of a stereotypical single-story ranch house.

With a limited budget, we have focused the attention of the project into a few critical areas of daily living - creating a single large room to contain living, dining and kitchen.

Like most typical builder homes, this 1960's ranch house has 8' high ceilings.  As we are removing interior walls and making a larger space, the proportion of room width to height was going to change dramatically.  Without the budget to change the structural framing of the ceiling/roof, we needed to come up with a way to make that existing ceiling plane a dynamic part of the project, not a low, oppressive presence.

To bring natural light into the center of the house we installed four skylights dispersed throughout the living/dining/kitchen.  And, to alleviate the low-ceiling issue we cut long slots between the existing trusses to create the skylight shafts, instead of the typical smaller light wells typically created in skylight installations.

As a result, the natural light coming into the space and the long slots modulate the light into a series of patterns, highlighting the new space and the wood panels and handrails.

- making lemonade out of lemons -