For a guy who doesn’t like yard work, Blank has plenty of landscape to dabble with on the 10,000-square-foot, doublewide lot his home sits on (part 1). He inherited a wonderful chartreuse honey locust tree that’s visible through the living room windows, and clumps of aspens and a large Russian olive near the backyard water feature. He brought in moss rock and river rock and created swales and berms of low-maintenance plantings—junipers, grasses, vinca—and confines blooms to a few pots on the patios.
Blank also removed part of the existing cement patio and installed a rusting steel water feature in that space, as well as designing a pergola that his contractor fabricated. Its angled supports and random-length cross pieces tie in with the interior A-frame aesthetic.
The home is undeniably individualistic. “I wanted a clean, modern look, yet a little retro in the kitchen— though I’m not a kitschy guy,” he says. Both baths had been remodeled when he bought it, and Blank is still systematically undoing some of the PO’s neo-colonial finishes, both inside and out.
When he couldn’t find what he wanted at Denver vintage stores, he went with a couch and “Gigi” chairs from Room and Board, a generic Nelson-style bench, a cubist end table and a chaise lounge from Mitchell Gold’s retro collection. Geodes and amethyst crystals from his South American upbringing are on display, as is an old Indonesian iron pot next to the fireplace, sugarcane grinders from the Philippines displayed as sculpture, Vietnamese black clay pots and a portion of a Cambodian fishing boat.
“People give me grief about the cowhide rug, but I grew up in Brazil and they were very commonplace on hardwood floors. The furnishings in the living room are a culmination of where I grew up and where I’ve been,” he says.
From Landscape to Kitchenscape
Like the rest of the home’s interior and exterior landscape, the kitchen honors MCM design while still being a strong testament to Blank’s unique perspective. Learn about the kitchen’s one-of-a-kind personality in part 3.
