Applewood Our House - Lakewood

Applewood Our House on Upham is a small, secured residential care home at 1900 Upham Street in east Lakewood, Colorado, on the edge of Sloan's Lake and Edgewater. With just 16 residents, it offers memory care and assisted living in an actual house rather than a wing of a large building, which is the whole point of the Applewood Our House model: care that feels like family life, not an institution. The home serves residents living with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, as well as those who need everyday assisted-living help, in a secured setting with a locked, safe layout and a secured backyard.

Caregivers are QMAP-certified for medication administration and trained in dementia care, and the small size keeps attention personal, with roughly one caregiver for every six residents. Upham is laid out as four private rooms and six companion rooms, the latter using closet dividers that convert into a small bedroom-and-sitting-area suite, with private and half baths and roll-in showers. The home opened in 2012 and centers on a great room and a residential chef's kitchen with granite counters where meals are part of daily life.

Dining is built around a dietitian-created, seasonal rotating menu, with snacks through the day and residents and staff often involved in food prep. The week fills with arts and crafts, games, gardening, gentle exercise, and a genuinely active outings program that takes residents to museums, the zoo, botanical gardens, and fishing trips. A resident house dog named Etta is part of the household, and residents are welcome to bring their own pets by arrangement, which a senior advisor can walk through.

The secured backyard has raised garden beds and a walking path so residents can grow vegetables and spend time outdoors safely. Applewood Our House runs five small homes across the west Denver metro, and a senior advisor can walk a family through current all-inclusive pricing, how funding works, and whether a private or companion room is the better fit. The Upham location is one of the home's draws, on the Sloan's Lake and Edgewater border minutes from downtown Denver, near Sloan's Lake Park and the Edgewater Public Market.

Intermountain Health Lutheran Hospital is a short drive north in Wheat Ridge, with St. Anthony Hospital, a Level I trauma center, also in Lakewood. With a true 16-resident house, a secured memory-care setting, home-cooked meals, and a resident house dog on the Sloan's Lake edge, Applewood Our House on Upham gives families an intimate alternative to a large memory-care building.