For Sale: Stunning Black Forest Home
A freshly remodeled retreat in the heart of Colorado’s Black Forest.
A freshly remodeled retreat in the heart of Colorado’s Black Forest.
Nestled on nearly six acres of majestic lodgepole pine forest at 7,000 feet of elevation, in the "Banana Belt of the Black Forest" , this freshly remodeled home sits on a peaceful cul-de-sac in a southern-facing, bowl-shaped valley, shielding it from wind and traffic.
Kettle Creek runs across the back part of the property, enhancing the peaceful serenity. The property extends further East of Kettle creek, giving you ownership of both sides of the creek for hundreds of feet. Halfway down the trail down to the creek, you lose cellphone service, rendering the area around it seemingly miles away from civilization, even though it isn't!
Sitting down by your own private creek is a very peaceful way to relax and unwind from the daily stresses of modern life. Even if you do forget and take your cellphone down there with you, nobody can bother you with any unexpected calls, putting a chill on your serenity!
Additionally, the North-South facing dirt road out front is bathed in sun almost all day, ensuring quick snow melt in the wintertime.
Recently remodeled and updated by an engineer and construction company owner (me!) who thinks that if a little is good, more is better; this home is the epitome of efficient, comfortable living. I planned to live here forever and designed this house with all the modern conveniences that I wanted, but life has made other plans for me.
Even though this property will be represented by trustworthy and competent real estate people, I am a tech-nerd who thought it was a good idea to roll my own website for this property, which is what you are looking at now. You are welcome to reach out to me, or you can keep it all between realtors if you wish. This property is not being listed as a FSBO, and I am not selling it myself. I prefer to let those who are good at that stuff handle it for me.
The entire upper level is an almost 1,000 sq ft master suite with a 160 square foot, 5-piece master-bath with robot toilet, and a 96 square foot walk-in closet with built-in shelving and quality cabinetry.
From the master bedroom, four huge windows overlook the forested property to the West and South, from which you can survey your two barns, and a greenhouse (needing some TLC) with an attached garden plot and duck house. The master bedroom also has a nice nook in the SouthEast corner that you could use as a home office space, a music or art studio, or just a place to sit and read while looking at the rolling, pine-covered hills, or watching a simple, gentle snowfall. This is the stuff of which great vacations are made, but you'd be living here and doing it every day!
The upstairs master suite also has newly constructed exterior walls with board-and-batten siding and all new, modern insulation. There's also a freshly-blown layer of new insulation in the attic. In addition, ALL of the interior walls in the whole house are also fully-insulated, which increases the comfort of the house as well as the sound-dampening. This is a very quiet, very comfortable home.
The lower bedroom level features two bedrooms and another large 5-piece bathroom. Each bedroom features a nice walk-in closet with built-ins as well. There are no shallow closets. No cheap bi-fold doors and no el-cheapo, least-common-denominator wire closet shelving racks.
The main level has a fourth bedroom, ideally suited as an office. It features an en-suite 3-piece bathroom and large walk-in closet with built-in shelving and gun safe, bringing the bedroom count up to four and the bathroom count to three. The main level also has a large multi-purpose room, a large living room with a wood-burning stove, and a half-circle round front room with eleven windows and two exterior doors, giving you a 180 degree view of the front yard and the entire west-side of the property. I call it my storm-watchng room. Buy it from me and you can call it whatever you want.
All the electrical wiring, plumbing, windows and doors are new, as is most of the siding. The electrical infrastructure in this house is all new and was designed by a friend of mine, who is a professional electrician. Each outlet circuit is wired with 12 gauge wiring on 20-amp breakers, with the lighting circuits all on 14 gauge wiring and 15 amp breakers. All wiring, panels, outlets, and fixtures are new and all lighting fixtures are LED-based with dimmers where they made sense, which is most-everywhere.
The windows and doors all feature low-e glass and are all very energy efficient, as is the rest of the house.
Yes. There are two!
The large main kitchen has a Dacor double convection oven and a high-end five burner GE Monogram gas cooktop with pot filler. The massive fifteen-foot-long by five foot wide island is supplied with two separate 20-amp electrical circuits and features a full sink, new top-of-the-line Kitchenaid silent dishwasher with stainless interior, and semi-circular seating for up to eight.
Behind the main kitchen is yet another full kitchen/utility room my wife calls her "canning-kitchen", featuring an Electrolux range with two more ovens, one of which is also a convection oven, while the lower one is really just a warming oven, but can be used for full-on baking. I undersell it because it's just the smallest of the four ovens.
On the top of the Electrolux range is another five-burner cooktop with pot filler. The electrolux range also comes with a full set of extra burner grates that my wife uses for canning operations.
Also in the canning-kitchen is another full sink, silent Bosch dishwasher with stainless interior, and a special spot for a microwave that is NOT over the oven. The canning kitchen also has a spot for a large, front-load washer / dryer set. The dryer area is plumbed for gas and wired for a 240V outlet in case you decide to go with a gas or electric dryer. We're currently using a gas dryer so the dryer circuit is capped off in the main panel but if you wanted to use it all you'd have to do is install a 240V, 30Amp breaker in the box and connect the circuit, which is already sitting unused in the wall. The dryer is also plumbed with a separate water connection in case you hve a steam dryer, which we do. I really did design this house with all future needs in mind.
This brings the kitchen capability count to four electric ovens (three convection), two gas stoves with a total of ten burners, two large sinks and two silent, stainless dishwashers. This is a true, over-the-top gourmet kitchen made for only the most die-hard foodies, or for entertaining large crowds of hungry people if you so choose.
Both kitchens have all new high-end cabinetry with soft-close doors and drawers, and no particleboard. Behind the double-oven in the back kitchen is a set of hand-made, live edge slab open shelves made from solid lodgepole pine slabs from one of the trees in front of the house that had to be cut down due to a pine-bark beetle infestation. That is just one of the downsides of living in a lodgepole pine forest in Colorado, but we used the tree to make some nice shelves, so that's an up-side. Next to the live-edge open shelving is a custom-built, open spice rack that is designed to hold your large spice bottles on top and your smaller, more frequently used spice bottles on the lower shelves.
The new kitchen design required some plumbing on an exterior wall, so I doubled up the exterior wall in that area, and continued the double-wall / double-insulation North all the way to the garage. That back wall of the house consists of a double two-by-four exterior wall with a layer of 5/8" drywall inbetween them. Each of the two walls is also insulated, and all plumbing is inside the interior wall, which keeps it safe from freezing in the event we get a severe cold-snap. This makes the rear wall on the NorthEast side of the house in the kitchen and living room, about ten inches thick, with LOTS of insulation in it.
The home features natural gas-fired hydronic heating powered by a recently serviced, modern, computerized, natural-gas Burnham boiler that pumps hot water through lines embedded every twelve inches apart in the floors throughout the home, all of which are either solid oak hardwood, or tile. There is no linoleum or cheap flooring in this property. Actually there is no cheap anything in this home. I always believe that if something is worth doing then it's worth overdoing; especially if it's mine.
Additionally, embedding hydronic heating in the floors requires two layers of 3/4" glued-and-screwed OSB sub-flooring, with the addition of solid 3/4" hardwood flooring on top of that - or concrete DuRock backer-board and tile in the bathrooms. This makes the floors in this home 2-1/4" of thick, glued-and-screwed solid perfection - with no cheap particle board - which makes the floors very solid and very, very quiet.
Click here For more information on hydronic radiant heating, and here for pictures of our radiant heating system being installed.
The round room in front is the only room in the house without in-floor heat, because it is on a tile-covered slab. For heating in the round room, there are a series of in-floor ducts that gather heat from the area around the wood burning stove and pump it into the round room. In addition to that, there is a custom-built, forced-air hydronic heating system built into the steps which gently and quietly blows warm air from under the steps into the round room. It's available for those super-cold Colorado snowstorms, but we rarely use it. Though the round room has eleven windows and two exterior doors, it rarely gets cold enough to require the step heater to be activated so we usually just leave its thermostat turned off. But it's there if you want it.
The boiler also very efficiently provides hot water for the kitchen and bathrooms. It was recently serviced and cleaned, and is great condition.
If needed, additional heating is provided by a high-efficiency wood-burning stove in the
living room, and three heat pumps in each of the three main living areas of the house.
In the summer months, refrigerated cooling is provided by the three heat pumps on an as-needed
basis but there aren't more than a couple of weeks per year when air conditioning is needed, and its
never too hot to sleep with the windows open in the summer.
The heating and cooling in this home has been designed for comfort, simplicity, ease of operation, and DIY maintenance and repair. One simply cannot buy a home with a better designed comfort system. That combined with the climate at this particular location and elevation, makes this home a dream to live in and maintain.
The oversized two-car, natural gas-heated garage will easily house a full length, extended cab pickup truck and a full-size SUV. It also has a huge, separately-lockable storage room with a floor drain that we call the "dry pantry". It's good for storing dry-goods and other supplies. The storage room is well-insulated, but I had a plan at one time to add another layer of 3" foamboard insulation to it, along with an 18,000 BTU AC unit and build a walk in cooler, but life had other plans for us, so it is an option for the new buyers. If you are a hunter, this room would make an excellent walk-in cooler for hanging slabs and ageing. If you avail yourself of the greenhouse and garden, then you can use it to store all of your fruits and vegetables.
In addition to the attached 2-car garage, there are three more cars worth of enclosed parking in the 2,000 square foot separate workshop behind the house. One of those bays currently has a Triumph 11,000 pound two-post lift that is negotiable for sale. If you were to park a car on the lift and then park another one under it, you would be able to stack two cars in that bay, bring the total number of enclosed parking spaces up to six at the house. That does not include three-cars worth of available parking in the big barn, where you could easily fit three more cars in another enclosed structure. If you were to remove the stalls in the big barn you could park ten or more cars in it with room to spare.
The workshop has a separately lockable, air-conditioned tool-room / mini workshop, and the installed Triumph 11,000 pound two-post car lift and 80 gallon, 240 volt Champion industrial air compressor are available to be negotiated into the sale.
Also housed in the workshop is a 10 Kilowatt Onan whole-house generator that is configured to power the entire property in the event of a power outage. The generator runs off of its own supply of Propane which comes from a 500 gallon propane tank behind the shop. The propane doesn't power anything else aside from the generator, and the tank is about 3/4 full. The house will run 24/7 for weeks on the generator with a full tank. During the Black Forest Fire, power was shut off at the main breaker and the house was run on the generator for over a week and only used about 1/4 of the tank of propane. Regarding the Black Forest fire, it never got remotely close to the property, but the entire area was evacuated due to safety concerns.
Due to the whole house generator being located in the workshop, all the home's electricity runs through it first, which gives you almost unlimited power options in the workshop. There are three 240V circuits in the shop for powering the air compressor, 2-post lift and welders and lots of space in the shop's panel for more if you wish. Additionally, aside from the main supply lines to the property, all electrical supply lines to the buildings are buried underground, so there are no overhead wires on the property to pollute your views.
Next to the workshop is an RV hookup with a 50 AMP 240 Volt connection, a 30AMP 120 Volt connection, fresh water supply and a sewer connection that drains into the home's septic tank.
There's also a large concrete sport court with professional basketball goal and volleyball net which has been removed to accommodate two forty foot shipping containers that the sellers will be taking with them. The volleyball net will be replaced after closing, when the containers are removed.
The property is mostly surrounded, and cross-fenced with a strong, steel pipe framed, cattle-panel fence.
The main 2000 square foot barn is on the South-end of the property, just North of a bend in Kettle Creek, and is the former home of the "Black Forest Equestrian Center". As it stands it has room for easily parking three more cars in it if you wish. It has a concrete floor running between the stalls and one of the stalls has a pier and beam floor in it. There is also a 112 square foot cinder-block walled, locking storage room in the barn as well as a horse washing stall with a floor drain. There is also a hydrant inside the barn for washing animals.
The barn has a new electrical panel, new wiring and lights, as well as a new water supply that provides straight well-water as well as filtered, softened drinking water in case you want to host any barn-parties. In fact, the agricultural area of the property has nine well-placed water hyrants. Four of them provide filtered and softened water suitable for drinking, and five of them provide straight well-water suitable for watering animals, irrigation, or power-washing.
On the West side of the barn is an open roof-covered area under which you can store implements or even park three more cars, in the event you are in need of more covered parking. It's always nice to be able to get cars out of the weather. With a little planning, this property gives you covered or indoor parking for up to a dozen cars (nine fully enclosed and locked, and three more under a secure covering), in the event of inclement weather, or just for storage in case you are a car guy.
The smaller 500 square foot barn has an indoor hen-house suitable for up to 30 chickens and includes a larger area for goats, a horse, or other small farm animals, should you so desire.
The house has a domestic well, suitable for farm animals and the property has already been designated as rural / agricultural with the state, which provides all the property-tax benefits associated with that designation.
Behind the workshop is a 2500 square foot fenced in and gated area suitable for more chickens, or as a pen for other small animals or livestock.
A large covered barbecue area / summer kitchen, and three decks - one regular sized and two huge, provide ample opportunity for enjoying the outdoors in this "high-alpine climate". With an average of 300 days of deep blue skies, abundant sunshine and low humidity, the Black Forest's climate is often as pleasant in the winter months as it is during the rest of the year. Set up a couple of large umbrellas, grab your laptop and spend your workday enjoying fresh mountain air and the smell of a pine forest at 7000-feet above sea-level. Yeah, beaches are nice, but they've got nothing on crisp, cool, fresh mountain air; at least not in my opinion. Why take a vacation when you already live in such a beautiful place?
All of the neighbors are well established, adult professionals, with some of them retired. They are
all very friendly. It's a live-and-let-live type of community with no HOA or covenants, where we
don't get up in each other's business, but always make ourselves available to help each other out
when help is needed. There are currently no small children in the neighborhood but small children
are definitely welcomed by everyone. Most of the people in the neighborhood have grown children
and are very grand-parently. Properties here rarely change hands. A neighbor across the street
recently received a large cash offer for his house which he turned down. He said, "Yeah, I could
sell, but where else could I find this kind of property and community? I love it here and
wouldn't want to ever leave."
A friend of mine recently told me that this is what's known ad a "buy-and-die" kind of
neighborhood, and I liked that description, aside from the "die" part.
A few years ago my adult daughter was driving on Powers in a snowstorm and someone whipped in front
of her and slammed on their brakes in an attempt to do an insurance fraud type of thing. The police
were all on accident-alert so they exchanged information and went their separate ways. Later, a
couple of Colorado Springs police officers came out here to interview her about the accident and
look at her car. They were walking around here, marveling at the area and one of them said, "It's
beautiful back here! I didn't even know this neighborhood existed!".
I think it is nice to live in a neighborhood of which the police have never heard. That tells me
that the crime here is so low that the police are unaware that anyone is even here.
The property feels miles away from civilization but is fully serviced by Black Hills Energy (natural gas), Mountain View Electric, and wired up with two separate fiber providers. The home is currently serviced with a 1 gigabit fiber plan from Force Broadband with an available 450 Megabit Starlink backup; making it an excellent home office for even the most hard-core of internet warriors.
Though it feels quite rural you are only eight minutes from the new King Soopers at North Gate and Highway 83, and ten minutes from the I25 and Interquest exchange, for those who have places to go and things to do away from home.
For more information or to schedule a viewing, please call Phillip at (719) 244-0779 today, or...