Help my family choose a place to raise our kids! (Denver: sales, apartment)

[MT1117]

Hi there! This is my very first post on city-data, but I've been lurking for a year at least. We currently live in Memphis, TN and just put our house on the market two days ago. We are just ready to get out and are hoping to call Colorado our home. Other places we're looking at are Eugene and Missoula, but are thinking that the rain and cloud cover of those areas will be depressing.

So here are some details:
My profession: high end portrait and wedding photographer with an artsy, modern style
Husband's profession: carpenter specializing in custom cabinetry and furniture

What were looking for:
-Fairly close to Denver for the big city benefits, but have NO desire to live inside the city
-Scenery!!!
-Great access to trails and mountain recreation. We're big runners and my husband loves to fly fish. We definitely want some kind of stream or river very close.
-Family oriented - we have three kids. I would like some other families around us as well as great alternative Montessori schools.
-NOT conservative. But don't want to live in Boulder.
-Ideally, we would like to find 10-15 acres or so to build two houses (one for us and one for my in-laws). In-laws want horses.

I can't give you an exact price range yet because we have three rental houses to sell in Memphis, and we just don't know exactly what we can afford yet. We will likely just rent a simple apartment or small house for the first year or so, until we find the perfect piece of land to build.

So where would be a good place to look into? Some place I could have a photography studio with lots of families walking by. Then our house could eventually be on a chunk of lands somewhere nearby. I'm willing to commute a little (less than 45 minutes).

Way too idealistic right? Thanks in advance!

Manda

[jazzlover]

Unless you are at the top, and I mean the top of your respective professions, prepare to starve in Colorado. Both professions are a dime a dozen--especially in these tightening economic times.

[sunsprit]

I know two people in your profession in the Denver-Boulder area, who have both built up a clientele over the last 15-20 years. They are well known, "high end" professionals, sought out by many, graduates with BA degrees in fine arts/photography.

Both need to supplement their income with other jobs to support their photography habit, especially during the winter months when the wedding business slows down. Neither can justify the expense of a storefront studio in a retail location with lots of "walk-in" trade. Both have built "studio buildings" on their properties where they have some acreage and are reasonably accessible to their clientele with off street parking ... one, a stick-built building about 20 x 30, and the other, a Morton Building about 800 sq ft. Included in one was a darkroom which is no longer used, but converted to a portrait studio area, where he does a school portrait business each year. I think he also does product pictures for catalogues and marketing brochures to supplement his favorite work of wedding photography.

The other pro used a commercial darkroom company in Denver for their processing for years; I think he still uses a pro digital studio for their prints and his wife assembles the wedding albums for him.

I know yet another pro wedding photographer who's been in the business for over 40 years ... although I wouldn't call him "high end", but he's a busy guy. He also works outside to pay for his photography business habit ... as a drywaller. He doesn't have the arts degree that the others do, but he's a serious pro with a large clientele built up over the years. He, too, works out of his home office and doesn't have a studio at all.

As far as custom cabinetry work here, this was one of the most common trades of alternative lifestyle people living up and down the front range. There's so many little custom workshops around here that it would make your head spin. Everything from custom cabinetry to custom furniture to making cabinets for speakers and other enclosures. It's not uncommon here to see auctions or private sales of all the top quality equipment that a shop would use. A friend here in town bought most of the equipment from one shop, all Boice-Crane or similar pro quality stuff ... and, after dusting it off and installing it, it looked like new and I think he was the third or fourth owner of most of it. I think the drum sander he bought was a 4' or 5' wide unit ... and the seller was crying pretty hard when the stack of new belts for it went for $5 per each at the auction. The sander brought about $800, and a large oscillating spindle sander (B-C) brought about $350 with boxes of arbors and sanding rolls.

A number of years ago, I had another friend decide he was going to build a wooden boat in his workshop. He had only rudimentary woodworking tools, and knew of another fellow who had been making custom oak furniture in Boulder. He asked if he could "borrow" a couple of sanders and clamps for his boatbuilding effort ... at a time when the woodworker was having second thoughts about staying in the business. The shop owner was agreeable to loaning ... indefinitely ... his woodworking tools and equipment with only one request: that the boat builder take possession of the entire shop's worth of stuff, care for it, use it, and return it when the boat was completed. It took us three weekends just to inventory all the stuff and then move it to the boatbuilding shop where a shed had to be built to house all the equipment. It was all top rate, first class pro production stuff ... a pleasure to work with, probably well over $100,000 worth back then. The boat was built, and the woodworker didn't even want the tools back ... so it was all auctioned off from the boatbuilder's home workshop and the money sent to the woodworker. Ironically, he'd moved to SanFrancisco to be a photographer .....

[Shuffler]

Sounds like you've never spent any time here and are making some pretty optimistic assumptions about Colorado and the Front Range, and the overall economic climate.

Unless money is no object, you'll want to pare back your expectations. Colorado is a 'pay to play' state and you will pay dearly for what you seek...to the tune of many millions.