6000 Bees LLC purchases, renovates then resells historic homes, and has the experience and know-how to save historic structures that everyone else has written off as unsalvageable. We’re also a general contractor and can take on difficult additions to older homes.

Want to remodel an old building using your own contractor? We provide knowledgeable consulting services, and have a professional network of architects and structural engineers that will help you save your historic structure.

Saving old homes helps the environment
Every old structure has a story to tell, and tearing down and hauling perfectly adequate homes and buildings to the landfill is not only wasteful but contributes to climate change. New buildings — even energy efficient, LEED-certified ones — have carbon footprints that take decades to recover versus renovating old buildings.

Doing their part to save the planet, owners Doug Conarroe and his wife, Dana Coffield, have renovated and resold — in their spare time — a total of 19 historic homes, including two mountain cabins, since 1989. Doug and Dana were featured in a 2004 segment of HGTV’s series Restore America.  Doug built or renovated another six non-historic homes in his spare time and specializes in moving and renovating abandon and/or uninhabitable farmhouses and structures from the 1880 to 1920 time period.

These are not the everyday cosmetic fix and flips like you see on today’s HGTV. Our homes undergo a top-to-bottom update, including new foundation, plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Often times the structure is reinforced or partially rebuilt to bring it up to modern codes. The homes are then pre-sold while undergoing renovation, with the new homeowner having input into floorplans, finishes and kitchen style. This makes them affordable and family-friendly.

Preservation, not gentrification
A lot of our projects have been relocating abandoned structures to vacant lots in the diverse neighborhoods of Old Town Lafayette, which displaces a rabbit or two but not people. The rest of our projects have been renovating abandoned and/or uninhabitable structures that were too dangerous for occupancy.

We care about and want to preserve our culturally and racially diverse Lafayette neighborhoods, and chose to live where we live because of that. Because racial equity is dependent on integrated rather than segregated neighborhoods.

6000 Bees’ expertise
• A team approach to structural assessment of an historic structure. Our visits can include a skilled contractor familiar with old buildings, a preservation architect and a licensed structural engineer.
• Assessing historic structures for relocation.
• Logistics planning related to moving structures of all sizes.
• Once it gets there, fitting a moved structure to a new lot and placing it on a new foundation.
• Extreme renovations involving stabilizing and renovating to current code balloon-frame homes, stone structures and historic outbuildings.
• Internal steel frame reinforcement and retrofitting of historic properties.
• Replacing and stabilizing rubble and stacked stone foundations.
• Repairing and replacing timber sills.
• Masonry work including repair of non-vitrified brick walls and structures utilizing hydrated lime mortar.
• Refurbishing historic doors and window trim, sills, frames and panes.

Committed to the community
Doug Conarroe is a fourth-generation Coloradan who grew up in Louisville, Colorado. His parents, Percy and Carolyn Conarroe, owned and operated the Louisville Times, Lafayette News and Erie Review from 1965 to 1997.

Doug currently serves on the Lafayette Historic Preservation Board. He is a past president and board member (1996-2002) of Historic Boulder, Inc., and is a member of the Louisville History Foundation. Doug joined the Lafayette Historical Society as a lifetime member in about 1998.

He has a journalism degree and an MBA from the University of Colorado and worked for the family newspaper before joining the Denver Post and then The (Tacoma) News Tribune. He published the North Forty News from 2011 to 2017.  Doug and Dana have lived in Lafayette, Colo. since 1995.