Feature Home: Upscale Upcycling
06 Mar 2018
How a shrewd eye for upcycling resulted in a stunning home with stories behind every wall.
By Lisa Marshall Photos by WeinrauchPhotography.com Show Molly Steele old school lockers and she sees quaint cubbies for her kids muddy shoes. Hand her rusted rings from whiskey barrels and she envisions frames for her favorite family portraits. Give her a pile of weathered tin and her mind conjures up an elegant wall collage.



Pay It Forward
An aquamarine door on sliding metal tracks is the entrance to Mollys new office. Amid the homes sea of mellow earth tones, its a bold statement. I just really wanted a pop of color, she says, explaining how she and the craftsmen who did the homes exterior stucco covered plain manufactured-wood sheets with Venetian plaster to craft the door. Inside the office, her collection of antique cameras lines a shelf and a bare bulb attached to a farm pulley partially lights the room. A metal wall collage adorns the landing that leads to her downstairs photo studio. When clients ask where I got it, I just have to smile, knowing that it used to line someones chicken coop.But perhaps her favorite story involves those salvaged school lockers. Everything here has a story behind it, Molly says with a smile. She spotted the 12 well-worn, paint-peeling treasures at Boulders Resource Central (formerly Center for ReSource Conservation). She couldnt resist such a find, and dragged the lockers home to the new mudroom they had added and asked a construction worker to pry them open. Inside, she found old school papers covered in dust, an obsolete dictionary and a decades-old Bible, with a name, date and inscription scrawled inside: To Randall: From Mom and Dad. Dec. 26, 1994. The Steeles didnt want to throw the Bible outbad karma, Molly says, so Doug tracked down the owner through a Google search. Randall Rayback suspects he left the Bible in a locker in 1994, when he was 9 and attending Bible study at a Christian school in Lafayette. Molly returned it to him just in time for the birth of his own son. The fact that we could give it to him and hes passing it on to his son is really special, she says.Molly would come in daily with her findsstuff shed picked up at antique stores or barns or things shed seen onlineand say, How can we use this?

Feature Home Resources
General Contractor: Ron Monahan Construction Inc., 303-444-0715 Design Consultant: Heather Vermeer, HKvermeer@gmail.com, 303-715-8333 Kitchen Timbers: Wood Source, www.woodsource.com Kitchen Countertops: Dorado Soapstone, www.doradosoapstone.com Folding Glass Doors: NanaWall, www.nanawall.com Recycled Doors/Lockers: Resource Central, www.resourcecentral.org Laundry Tub: McGuckin Hardware, www.mcguckin.com Birdcage Lights: Target, www.target.com