The method behind Hilltop Revival, a whole-house midcentury remodel in Denver

Huron InteriorsAnn Marie WinklerInterior Designer

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The method behind Hilltop Revival, a whole-house midcentury remodel in Denver

Huron InteriorsAnn Marie WinklerInterior Designer

Hilltop Revival is a full remodel of a midcentury home in Denver's Hilltop neighborhood. Huron Interiors gutted and reimagined the entire house, then put back the details that made it worth saving, including its stained glass windows and a curved staircase.

Nothing about a whole-house remodel happens one room at a time. The open main level connecting kitchen, living and dining, the primary suite designed as a spa-like retreat, and the downstairs lounge with its custom bar all moved together, each with its own selections, trades and deadlines.

The design held its nerve through that. Clean midcentury lines run through the finished rooms, and the tile gets to be playful: sage green and glazed in the kitchen, graphic black and white under the office desk, dark and geometric in the powder room.

Huron Interiors is run by two sisters, Ann Marie Winkler and Kelly Smethills. Their Programa workspace shows how a two-person studio keeps this much work legible: a template every project starts from, fees scoped and tracked in hours, and one record per product from moodboard to purchase order.

Entry hall of Hilltop Revival with preserved stained glass shelving and warm timber doors — The home's original stained glass, kept and rehoused in the entry shelving.

With every room moving at once, Programa kept the whole house on one page.
Ann Marie WinklerHuron Interiors

Open kitchen of Hilltop Revival with a timber island, black pendant lights and sage green tile

Start from a template, not a blank page

One project in the workspace will never be installed

Alongside its live work, Huron Interiors keeps a project called Residential Project Template. It exists to be duplicated. Every new job starts from it, so the phases, task lists and schedule categories arrive already built instead of being reinvented under deadline.

The naming convention does quiet work too. Projects are named client first, scope second. When one client's ADU needed both a finishes scope and a furnishings scope, it became two projects rather than one long list. Each record stays short enough to actually read.

That structure is carrying real load. In the week we looked, the studio had more than a dozen residential projects in the workspace, covering everything from an entry room to a full remodel with an addition.

Pro tip

A template project costs one afternoon and pays back on every job after it. Duplicate it, rename it client first and scope second, and the new project opens with your phases and schedule categories already in place.

Explore Project Management

Home office of Hilltop Revival behind black framed glass doors with a burl wood desk and graphic tile floor

Scope in hours, then watch the hours

The commercial shape of the job sits at the top of the project

Open one of Huron's current projects and the first line under the title is the scope: a flat fee, defined as 142 hours, with the deposit and the balance tied to handoff to the contractor. Anyone on the project reads the commercial terms before they read the first task.

The phases are named the way an architecture studio would name them: Programming, then Design Development. The timer runs against a project and a phase, so a week of work sorts itself as it happens. The week we looked, the studio logged 64 hours and 30 minutes, most of it design development.

Because the fee is scoped in hours, tracked time stops being admin and becomes a budget. On that same project, just under 56 of the 142 scoped hours had been recorded. That is not a report someone compiles at the end of the month. It is on the overview, every day, next to the task list.

Pro tip

If you charge flat fees, scope them in hours and track against them. You want to know when tracked time passes two-thirds of scope while there is still fee left to manage, not after it has run out.

Explore Time Tracking

Kitchen detail of Hilltop Revival with sage green glazed tile, a brass-knobbed range and warm timber cabinetry

One record from moodboard to purchase order

Approval lands on the product, not in an email

Huron's presentations look like moodboards, but the objects on them are records. A table lamp pinned to a living room board carries its room, its quantity and a green Approved status. When the client signs off, the decision attaches to the item itself rather than sitting in a thread somewhere.

The same records scale up. One current project runs a 75-item FF&E schedule, and purchase orders go out to suppliers like Visual Comfort, Mullan Lighting and West Elm from the same workspace. Invoicing sits beside the projects too, so the paperwork follows the product rather than chasing it.

The practical effect is that nothing has to be re-entered. The lamp the client approved on the board is the lamp on the schedule, and the lamp on the purchase order. One record, three moments in its life.

Powder room of Hilltop Revival with dark geometric tile, a stone basin and a fluted pendant light

Character survives the process

The risk in systemizing a studio is that the work starts to look systemized. Hilltop Revival argues the opposite. The stained glass got kept. The dining chairs are leopard print. Three rooms got three different tiles, and each one reads as a decision rather than a default.

Those choices survived because the admin around them stayed boring. The template did the setup, the hours watched themselves against the fee, and every product carried its own paper trail.

Hilltop Revival photographs as one confident decision. The workspace behind it shows hundreds of small ones, each written down once and kept where the next person could find it.

Dining room of Hilltop Revival with a black lacquer table, leopard print chairs and a built-in bar — The downstairs bar and dining space, built for entertaining.

Huron InteriorsDesign Studio

Toolkit

Hilltop Revival is a full remodel of a midcentury home in Denver's Hilltop neighborhood. Huron Interiors gutted and reimagined the entire house, then put back the details that made it worth saving, including its stained glass windows and a curved staircase.

Nothing about a whole-house remodel happens one room at a time. The open main level connecting kitchen, living and dining, the primary suite designed as a spa-like retreat, and the downstairs lounge with its custom bar all moved together, each with its own selections, trades and deadlines.

The design held its nerve through that. Clean midcentury lines run through the finished rooms, and the tile gets to be playful: sage green and glazed in the kitchen, graphic black and white under the office desk, dark and geometric in the powder room.

Huron Interiors is run by two sisters, Ann Marie Winkler and Kelly Smethills. Their Programa workspace shows how a two-person studio keeps this much work legible: a template every project starts from, fees scoped and tracked in hours, and one record per product from moodboard to purchase order.

With every room moving at once, Programa kept the whole house on one page.
Ann Marie WinklerHuron Interiors

Start from a template, not a blank page

One project in the workspace will never be installed

Alongside its live work, Huron Interiors keeps a project called Residential Project Template. It exists to be duplicated. Every new job starts from it, so the phases, task lists and schedule categories arrive already built instead of being reinvented under deadline.

The naming convention does quiet work too. Projects are named client first, scope second. When one client's ADU needed both a finishes scope and a furnishings scope, it became two projects rather than one long list. Each record stays short enough to actually read.

That structure is carrying real load. In the week we looked, the studio had more than a dozen residential projects in the workspace, covering everything from an entry room to a full remodel with an addition.

Pro tip

A template project costs one afternoon and pays back on every job after it. Duplicate it, rename it client first and scope second, and the new project opens with your phases and schedule categories already in place.

Explore Project Management

Scope in hours, then watch the hours

The commercial shape of the job sits at the top of the project

Open one of Huron's current projects and the first line under the title is the scope: a flat fee, defined as 142 hours, with the deposit and the balance tied to handoff to the contractor. Anyone on the project reads the commercial terms before they read the first task.

The phases are named the way an architecture studio would name them: Programming, then Design Development. The timer runs against a project and a phase, so a week of work sorts itself as it happens. The week we looked, the studio logged 64 hours and 30 minutes, most of it design development.

Because the fee is scoped in hours, tracked time stops being admin and becomes a budget. On that same project, just under 56 of the 142 scoped hours had been recorded. That is not a report someone compiles at the end of the month. It is on the overview, every day, next to the task list.

Pro tip

If you charge flat fees, scope them in hours and track against them. You want to know when tracked time passes two-thirds of scope while there is still fee left to manage, not after it has run out.

Explore Time Tracking

One record from moodboard to purchase order

Approval lands on the product, not in an email

Huron's presentations look like moodboards, but the objects on them are records. A table lamp pinned to a living room board carries its room, its quantity and a green Approved status. When the client signs off, the decision attaches to the item itself rather than sitting in a thread somewhere.

The same records scale up. One current project runs a 75-item FF&E schedule, and purchase orders go out to suppliers like Visual Comfort, Mullan Lighting and West Elm from the same workspace. Invoicing sits beside the projects too, so the paperwork follows the product rather than chasing it.

The practical effect is that nothing has to be re-entered. The lamp the client approved on the board is the lamp on the schedule, and the lamp on the purchase order. One record, three moments in its life.

Character survives the process

The risk in systemizing a studio is that the work starts to look systemized. Hilltop Revival argues the opposite. The stained glass got kept. The dining chairs are leopard print. Three rooms got three different tiles, and each one reads as a decision rather than a default.

Those choices survived because the admin around them stayed boring. The template did the setup, the hours watched themselves against the fee, and every product carried its own paper trail.

Hilltop Revival photographs as one confident decision. The workspace behind it shows hundreds of small ones, each written down once and kept where the next person could find it.