Living Smaller in a Bungalow

By Jay Dedrick

Virginia DuBrucq is constantly in motion, constantly thinking. She uses her daily race-walks around a park in her Denver neighborhood, where she's lived since 1965, to ponder life's possibilities.

It was on one of those walks seven years ago that she noticed the brick bungalow, the one with the inviting courtyard. She wasn't looking to move. But Virginia, an architect, studied that home and imagined the possibilities.

"I hadn't even been inside the house," says Virginia. "And by the end of my race-walk, I'd designed the addition in my head, created the indoor/outdoor courtyard space."