High Desert Style

Before the remodel:

For the full story, pick up the March/April 2008 issue of Mountain Living.

Mountain homes at their best fully relate to and celebrate their settings, echoing the materials from which they are built while welcoming magnificent views into harmonious living spaces.

But let’s be realistic. Some houses, no matter how lofty their surroundings, are all too mundane. That was certainly the case for the dwelling designer Rob Edley Welborn bought in late 2005 in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mMountains, six blocks from the historic plaza of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Originally built in 1973 from mail-order plans, the 3,000-square-foot split-level was “a garish eyesore,” says Welborn. Unlike the typical earthen adobe construction and turquoise trims of many of its neighbors, it featured yellow stucco walls and sliding windows with narrow aluminum frames in “an utterly typical style that could have just as easily been in Dallas or Atlanta.” Worse still, the cookie-cutter layout did nothing to relate to sunrise-facing prospects of the steeply rising nearby peaks, or sunset vistas stretching across the Rio Grande Valley to the Jemez Mountains.

Many prospective buyers had turned and run, and the house had languished on the market. “But I thought I could figure something out for it,” Welborn says. “So I bought it specifically to renovate.”

All homeowners have their own list of absolute musts when they embark on a home-improvement project. Rob Edley Welborn shares his own, including a few features that surprised him after the remodeling process:

Strong indoor-outdoor connections. “Because of Santa Fe’s climate and high elevation,” Welborn says, “you can’t have indoor-outdoor living seven or eight months out of the year. “But looking through French doors or windows to the view or to a little garden or terrace can make a strong psychological connection to the outdoors.”

A soaking tub. Rather than give over extra space in his master bath to a large tub he could stretch out in, Welborn installed a deep Japanese-style tub with a smaller footprint. “I shower every day at the gym,” he explains. “But the tub is good for soaking in occasionally, especially because there’s a window there with a view.”

Rooms that do double duty. “I refurnished a downstairs bedroom off the entry foyer as a library, with a round butcher-block reading table,” he says. “It’s a cozy little room, less than 12 by 12 feet, and occasionally I serve dinner there for four people.”

A dressing room. An upstairs bedroom became the master suite’s dressing room, complete with built-in storage, mirrors, a central storage island, and two chairs flanking a window. “All of a sudden,” says Welborn, “I found myself with something more than a closet. When I get dressed, I don’t feel like I’m walking into a cave and digging through a pile of rags. This room is a real joy, more important than I had imagined it would be.”

Above the new fireplace in the living room, a landscape by New Mexico-based painter Forrest Moses adds an idyllic view to a wall that covered up an uninspiring street-facing window. The homeowner/designer inexpensively added warm texture to the room by flanking the fireplace wall with panels of medium-density fiberboard with a stonelike faux finish of caustic paint and wax. A parson’s-style walnut coffee table from the 1970s, an old overstuffed leather sofa, and a pair of classic modernist steel-and-leather Breuer chairs complete a the look the owner describes as “what I hope is gracefully eclectic.”

Before

Before:

Formerly a family room, the video lounge features oversized seating on a custom-made platform topped with a pair of twin-bed mattresses covered with plush fitted sheets and topped with an assortment of cushions made from luxurious silk and muslin fabric remnants. In a local antique shop, Welborn found an antique mesquite-wood bench that functions as both a coffee table and “an impervious footstool I can put my boots on.”

Before:

Ebony-stained cherry cabinets, a pale-green granite vanity counter, dark-stained floors of engineered wood with a cherry veneer, and a tub and walk-in shower surrounded by rust-hued porcelain tiles make the master bath a warmly welcoming retreat. Contrary to the common belief that a wood floor will warp in a bathroom, says Welborn, it works fine “as long as you don’t flood it.”