New Westminster Home
Westminster, CO
A blank lot in the heart of old town
The project began with a rare thing: an empty, never-built lot near the heart of old town Westminster. A blank slate — but far from an easy one. The lot had an unusual shape, deep setbacks, and the kind of constraints that quietly shrink how much home you can actually place on a piece of land. And like every good project, it came with a real budget to respect.
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The opportunity was to put a thoughtful, modern home where there had never been one — and to make every constraint work for the design rather than against it.
Solving the lot before solving the house
The hardest problem here wasn't the house — it was the land. Between the irregular lot shape and the deep setbacks, the buildable area was tight and oddly bounded, so the design started by working through exactly how much usable space the lot could yield, in coordination with the city's land development review for this long-vacant parcel.
From that envelope, the home took shape: a two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath design with a three-car garage that feels spacious despite the constraints, because no square foot is wasted. The master suite was placed at the south end to capture the distant view of Pikes Peak. A downstairs bedroom paired with a main-level full bath was designed to flex — a home office, a guest room, or a suite for an aging parent. And small, human touches anchored the plan: a combined stair-and-mudroom where afternoon light filters down as kids drop backpacks before heading up, and a window seat by the living room fireplace to read by.
A design that grew into something bigger
The owner loved this original single-family design — and that flexible downstairs suite turned out to be a hint of where the project was headed. As the vision matured, he grew excited about something larger: bringing multiple generations onto the property, and creating a place that could bless his children and grandchildren for years to come.
With encouragement from the City of Westminster, the design pivoted from a single-family home to a duplex built for multigenerational living — the version now under construction on the lot.
This page preserves that first vision: a modern home carefully fitted to a difficult lot, and the starting point for something even more meaningful. (See the duplex it became here.)