617 Frances Street, Key West, Florida - Just Listed

Just Listed by Preferred Properties Key West - 617 Frances Street. I had the opportunity to see this house just before it was listed and want to share some photos and thoughts with my readers - especially those looking for a fixer-upper.

I love how much the houses of Old Town have changed so little over the years. I found the above photo of 617 Frances St in my old shoe box. Take a look. When I found the photo I presumed the owner at that time had replaced original wood columns and balusters with wrought iron. That was a common practice across Mid-Century America. Chain link fences were equally popular and required less maintenance than painted white picket fences.

I then searched the Historic Sanborn Fire Maps to see if I could determine when the house was built. The lot where 617 Frances Street sat vacant up to and after the 1912 Map. I went to the Monroe County Property Appraiser website which shows the property to the rear at 618 Ashe Street had a house on that lot. I compared the Sanborn Map to current Property Appraiser Map which shows 617 Frances and 618 Ashe perfectly aligned. There was a small cottage sitting mid distance at what would become 617 Frances. I am confident that the current house did not exist as of 1912. I decided 615 Frances must have been split to create the new 617 Frances Street after the 1912 Map. A small building sat at the rear which I believe was incorporated into the building which is now 617 Frances.  The Property Appraiser records show the house as having been built in 1933 which we know is not correct as that was during the Great Depression which slammed Key West. This suggest the house was built after 1912 and before the WPA reconstructed the property records. My guess.

The house sits on a 3,060 sq ft lot (34' X 90') on one of the best blocks in Old Town. Most but not all of the houses on this block have been extensively renovated. 614 Frances Street was totally renovated when it sold in 2016 for $1,825,000. 620 Frances St sold in 2018 for $1,825,000.  The house to the rear and immediately south of  at 620 Ashe Street sold at $1,900,000 in 2019. I mention these sales as they indicate the price trend for renovated homes in this immediate area.

617 Frances Street is a place of possibilities. It is a true renovation project. I walked the entire lot and all around the inside of the house. The exterior needs work. The interior has been pretty much gutted so that a potential buyer can see what exists and what does not.

There are five foot side yards on the north and south sides of the house.  There is a small shed at the rear which abuts the property line.

The long narrow building at the rear may have been the "Dwelling" unit sited on the 1912 Map. The French doors painted black and the elevated wood deck were probably added in the 1970's or 1980's. They were not used in Key West houses before then. The windows in the front part of the house appear to be original. They have the old fashioned rope sashes.

This is  one and one-half story vernacular house found in many parts of Old Town and The Meadows area. The Property Appraiser says the house has 1,300 sq ft of living space. You enter into a hallway that passes an original parlor which has been opened and pass by what is now the kitchen. A door at the end of the hall opens into what I presume may have been the original Dwelling. It is long an narrow and has a high pitched roof that has been partially exposed at the entry. I can envision this room being made into an open living area with kitchen and dinging space included. I am familiar with another house on Grinnell Street that had this same size room and in just about the same condition that became a truly wonderful living space. I think the current deck could be replaced by a pool and that the rear cottage could become the laundry and storage room. Don't see what exists. Imagine what you could create. I think the parlor and kitchen could become first floor master bedroom and bath room. CLICK HERE to see all the photos I took.

The original chain link fence still wraps the entire lot including the front white picket fence which is attached to the chain link. I think there is adequate ground to comply with pool setback requirements.

There are two bedrooms on the second floor which share the only bathroom in the house.There used to be a bathroom on the first floor but the current owner removed it. Having existing plumbing and previous use will same some money during renovation.

CLICK HERE to view the Key West MLS datasheet on 617 Frances Street, Key West offered for sale at $995,000. Then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing. I am  buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.

912 Fleming St, Key West - Sunday Open House

I am hosting another Open House on Sunday February 23rd at 912 Fleming Street between 12 to 2  PM.  Stop by and check out this 3,228 square foot Grand Conch House.

You will likely find me sitting at the kitchen table working on a crossword puzzle. I'll stay seated as you work your way toward the glass panel doors that lead to the 30 foot covered rear deck that overlooks the gardens and pool.

As guests pass through the doorway out to the deck the most common refrain in "Oh My God!".  They see the pool and the magnificent open sky with no houses looking down onto the grounds.

Stop by. Take a look. Fall in Love with the view, the house, the location.

3529 Sunrise Drive, Key West, Florida

The lovely home at 3529 Sunrise Drive in Key West was built in 1963 and incorporates many of the styles and trends of that era. I pulled out the WayBack machine and recalled these events that occurred in 1963: the Beatles record their first album Please Please Me in a single session; Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique which re-launched the women's movement; General Hospital and The Outer Limits debuted on ABC and My Favorite Martian premiered on CBS, Leave It To Beaver ended - The Beav grew up; Martin Luther King was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for parading without a license and later issues his Letter From Birmingham Jail; Gary Thomas saw President John F. Kennedy in Berlin; the US, UK, and USSR signed the nuclear test ban treaty; Martin Luther King delivers his I Have a Dream speech from the Lincoln Memorial; instant replay was used for the first time during the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia; John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and three days later Lee Harvey Oswald was killed on live TV.

Events, styles, trends, fads - they all last for awhile and some impacted our lives for years or decades into the future. When you are young, you tend to live in the moment. As you get older, you learn that not everything in the world revolves around you. As you get much older, you may learn that what you do or say or think is of no consequence to anybody else. When you get even older, you disappear. That's sort of what happens to styles, trends and fads-they get ignored or displaced or even replaced. Styles that were hip become passe.

If you are old enough to remember the 1960s you will recall the space race and the New Frontier. You will remember the forward thinking we embraced. Our TV, our culture, our furniture and home goods, and our architecture reflected the hopes and dreams as aspirations of that time. Some homes built then still have fallout shelters a sad reflection of our mass paranoia of that time.

The home at 3529 Sunrise Drive incorporates many of the features found across America in the early 1960s including multiple living levels, large rooms, vaulted ceilings, and large outdoor living areas. But since the house was built in Key West, it has a large pool, tropically landscaped yard, and parking area for the family boat.

The listing Realtor describes the property this way:

"Walled for privacy and lined with lush landscaping this oversized corner lot hosts a 5 bedroom 2 1/2 bath home, large pool, several outside covered seating areas and covered parking. Also room to park your boat and located just down the street from the local boat ramp. Inside you will find vaulted ceilings, many rooms with tongue and groove ceilings, over-sized windows, a family room and den. Plenty of room for entertaining both inside and out. Come add your personal touch and have everything you need in Key West living."

This home is Key West suburban living at its best. This home was built by the lifelong resident of this property. It has been lovingly maintained for decades. You enter in to a formal entry which leads to the formal living area with vaulted tongue in groove wood ceiling the follows through to the sunken formal dining room. I showed this home several times a few years ago when the house was for sale. Potential buyers go distracted by the older style furniture and the animal pelts and heads. Those will disappear and a new owner will have free reign to create a new interior pallet.

When the owners updated the kitchen they kept some of the classic features of the past including the rotary phone and wall radio. They bought a new coil cook-top to replace the original. Of course a new owner could put in a new kitchen with white cabinets and stainless steel Viking appliances. You could. But you don't need to. The family room is a step-down from the kitchen. There is a bedroom and bath beyond. The door at the rear opens out to covered under house parking. Glass sliders in  the kitchen and family room open out to the pool and patio.

This 3,378 square foot home has five bedrooms and three baths on multiple levels. It sits on a large 137.5' X 65' corner lot just a few blocks from the eastern end of the Island of Key West. The houses across the street are located on Rivera Canal and sell for a bout a million dollars or more than the asking price of this property. That is because they are located on the canal. There are umpteen other owners in the area who use the nearby boat launch.

CLICK HERE  to view the Key West MLS datasheet and listing photos of 3529 Sunrise Drive Key West and then please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642, to schedule a private showing. This home is offered for sale at $1,170,000 or $346 per square foot. I am a buyers agent and a full time Realtor at Preferred Properties Key West.

Garage Sailing in Key West

This blog is now twelve years old. I have taken (literally and figuratively) thousands of photos of Key West properties over the years. I have stored them on several websites including Photobucket which was clumsy to use so I migrated Flickr which is my primary host now.

Yesterday I was searching my old Photobucket photos which go back about decade and found images of houses that have been renovated to the extent that I forogt how bad they used to look. That is why I do my continuing blog The Projects of Key West which I will be updating soon. I digress.

I came upon the photo above that I took years ago inside a cute little house on Elgin Lane. I just love the kitsch. Too wonderful for words. That's why I took the picture. It was of the one-of-a-kind lamp. I immediately recognized that lamp!

You may recognize the photo two above. It shows the living room of my new listing at 1213 Grinnell Street Key West. Look at the lamp next to the sofa. It's the same lamp that used to be at the Elgin Lane house except that it belongs to a totally different owner who bought it at a garage sale.

The owner told me that he and his wife love to go garage sailing. He has picked up some incredible one-of-a-kind items at bargain prices. He pointed out some of the pieces he bought and the amount he paid.  I was sitting on the above sofa as he described his purchases. I looked down at the sofa and told him a true story of two sofas of a similar design that I used to own.

I moved to Key West Christmas week in 1993. I had purchased the former Eaton Lodge guesthouse located at 511 Eaton Street. The building had been shut down for about two years while the property was being foreclosed upon by the Small Business Administration.  The windows and doors were boarded up to keep thieves and the homeless out.  The former owners left all of the furnishings including antique pieces of furniture acquired by their predecessors plus two white slip covered sofas of recent origin which were located  in the living room of the house once  owned William Warren, the town doctor. After we took possession we decided to keep the Eastlake pieces and all of the wood furniture but opted to put the two sofas out on the street. We knew someone would want those sofas even if we didn't.

We had barely got the second sofa placed on the sidewalk when this older man stopped and asked what we were doing and inquired if he might have the sofas. We had not had time to put the cushions on the sofas. He was delighted to learn that the sofas had cushions as well. Then he asked if we could hold the sofas until he could get a friend to help him move the sofas. I said yes. My partner and I moved the sofas back inside until the man returned with a younger man in his late thirties or early forties. I helped the younger man put these sofas in his aged Toyota. He made several trips carrying the sofas and cushions to some other location. The older man introduced himself as David Wolkowsky.

A year or so later my partner and I started to look at houses in Key West including a a newly built spec house on Admirals Lane in Truman Annex. I recall the asking price was $500,000.  The builder was David Wolkowsky. My two former sofas were located in the living room of this house. I laughed. I did not buy the house. I should have. That house is now worth around $2,000,000.

A few years later I saw the same two sofas inside a house David Wolkowsky had renovated on Washington Street in the Casa Marina East area.

I saw those same two sofas for the very last time on March 15, 2015 during an early evening Realtors Open House at a home Wolkowsky had just finished renovating on Johnson Street. This time they were located poolside near the giraffe. 

I got a phone call a couple of years ago from David. He had just finished a renovation on property on Eisenhower Drive which abutted a house I had listed on Albury Street. He called me to discuss the outrageous price I had on my listing. I told him the seller set the price, not me. He sounded genuinely angry at the price. He barked "Do you know who I am?" I said I did. He sold his house. My listing did not sell and has still not sold.

Some people recycle lamps. Some people recycle sofas. I recycle stories of Key West kitsch and characters. Go garage sailing. Buy somebody else's treasure. It's got to have a story behind it.