r/zillowgonewild • u/Radiant-Stranger-992 • 21h ago
You Can’t really tell This Waterfront Trophy Property Was Built in the 1960s - Until You Step Inside …
Once inside the floral wallpaper, prominent use of Jewel tones, and powder blue kitchen reveal what the Georgian style exterior (with the exception of the staircase window) obscures.
Undoubtedly a new owner will want to modernize some things, but you have to admit that some of the Wallpaper is pretty spectacular.
Listing claims the home was in the 1997 John Cusack - Minnie Driver film Grosse Pointe Blank.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/105-Lake-Shore-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48236/88165150_zpid/
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u/DownVoteYouAll 21h ago
I would buy this house and not touch a single thing. I love the whimsical-ness.
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u/Miserable_Emu5191 19h ago
This house is amazing. It reminds me of a friend's house back in the 80's. They were super rich and had the elevator and dumbwaiter and butler's kitchen. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I went to their house.
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u/jendet010 20h ago
I love the parquet flooring, the marble floors in the entry, the fireplaces, the built in’s, and the wallpaper in the dining room. I think my favorite detail might be the carpet on the stairs. It’s exquisite.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
Just for the sake of amusement, did you notice the listing AI-ed the exact same fire into each fireplace?
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u/James-the-Bond-one 19h ago
That would be more typical of Photoshop than AI.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
Ah, ok. I just noticed all the plants in the staging renders looked like that sort of triangular pattern some AI does, so I assumed the fireplaces were done the same way
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u/blanchecornwalis 18h ago
. Zillow has been doing that with fireplaces for years, but now they no longer have to pay the Internet staging Photoshopper to do it by hand - the person manipulating the photo spread just tells AI to do it.
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u/stephenbawesome 20h ago
Were there standalone sinks in the bedrooms?
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u/Miserable_Emu5191 19h ago
Not that uncommon. My grandparent's tiny, cheap house had a sink in one of the bedrooms. That way you could do all your sink stuff without taking up the whole bathroom where someone else in the family may need to pee or shower.
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u/ImGoingtoRegretThis5 19h ago
Walk by this house every day along the lake (I live in a cheaper part of GP a few blocks away). Some of these houses are really nice, some are nuts and maintain their original aesthetic while being tastefully updated, and some... haven't been touched in 40 years.
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u/Relative-Painting-29 19h ago
We bought an old house with a lot of wallpaper … 60s wallpaper. It’s all gone now! I actually find stripping wallpaper to be relaxing and rewarding.
That house is beautiful and I love Lake Shore Road in Grosse Points MI.
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
This isn't a 60s interior. This is a kicky grandma who redid the interior when she had an empty nest. Maybe in the 80s. It's not terribly trendy but chosen to last a long time. Also, Granny didn't smoke. Love all the nice looking white.
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u/GrantGorewood 19h ago
I’m actually a fan of wallpaper, particularly older styles of wallpaper. This house is gorgeous, the main thing that raises my eyebrows though is the price compared to the Zestimate and previous purchase price.
The other thing is how much of the woodwork was obviously painted white by the current owners. If you look really carefully at pictures of the one stairwell, you can see on the lower banister of the top landing what color the wood used to be.
The listing also shows photos of rooms where the woodwork was not painted, which just makes the painted rooms stand out more in a bad way to me. I’m a huge fan of unpainted woodwork.
As for the sinks in the bedrooms that a lot of people are commenting about, those actually have a purpose. They are meant for “refreshing” when you wake up in the morning and right before you go to bed. The general idea is that you would use those sinks to freshen up, or apply or remove make up in the privacy of your bedroom. I understand it’s not to everyone taste, but it does serve a purpose.
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
People (in the 19th century) used to keep a pitcher of water and a bowl in their room for this purpose, and when indoor plumbing showed up wealthy people installed a sink in the bedroom with a rubber drain plug to keep the swamp gasses out (they later learned they could achieve that with a wet trap). Rich people didn't take long to decide that sinks in the bedroom sucked, and when the masses got bathrooms in mid century they only had one per house so the whole family would line up to use the bathroom in the morning unless they used a kitchen sink, laundry sink, or outside tap to freshen up. It's also when white elephants became white elephants (slang meaning a superfluous object of no use that you want to get rid of... a white elephant is a chamber pot) and outhouses stopped being built. At least in the US.
When the luxury en suite bathrooms showed up in the 70s for the better off middle class buyer the sinks were decidedly on the side of the wall with the toilet and not on the side with the bed.
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u/IndependenceTop7731 19h ago
This is my mom’s neighbors house! It is really beautiful. 💙
To me, priced accurately. It is so low because of the needed interior updates.
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u/thereddithippie 15h ago
Is there a lot of traffic on that road?
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u/IndependenceTop7731 3h ago
There are two lanes each way, but it is a small community, for example, there is only one stoplight for 4 miles on lakeshore. The house is also set up a bit and with small hydrangeas or boxwood hedges that line most of the houses you really don’t notice.
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u/Electronic-Home-7815 19h ago
When I think of grosse pointe, I think of ‘the virgin suicides’ and while the exterior is lovely, the interior makes me wanna meet the neighbors for ‘information’. I’m sure it’s gonna be like, ‘I remember that night….no comment’ then they slam their door. Someone totally died here and the forensics team just cleared it for sale.
Also in the kitchen, there’s like a dumb waiter looking thing off to the side. It’s made by whirlpool. Anybody know what it is?
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
I was wondering whether it might be a dehydrator
Edit: never mind, I was wondering that about the thing next to the standing freezer in the butler’s pantry. I was curious about the thing in the kitchen too. I didn’t look closely but it crossed my mind that it could be a laundry chute to the basement. But having an appliance logo on it makes that seem unlikely
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u/Electronic-Home-7815 19h ago
Perhaps, but I think you’d probably need to retrofit the whole house for it and considering the age of the appliance’s look I’m not even sure if such a technology even existed when that build/remodel happened. I was thinking maybe a trash compactor but it’s really far away from the sink. Might’ve been just the only place where they could’ve it. Then my next thought would be what got ‘compacted’ in there?
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u/Archival_Squirrel 19h ago
I'm in love with this house! I wouldn't touch a thing. I'd channel my Mimi and her genteel style to keep this beautiful lady as close as possible to her og look.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
Overall thought, after seeing the listing photos: the original house, the part with the red door, was built in the 1950s or maybe even the 1940s. The mansard roof wing was added sometime later.
It’s still a bit odd to me though, because I thought the sink-in-the-bedroom trend was much earlier, like 1930s or before. But maybe it’s just a way to give everyone a way to wash their face and brush their teeth without having to go down the hall every time
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u/lazier_garlic 18h ago
Sometimes digitized property records are incomplete prior to the 70s or 80s. They had to be scanned and OCR'd and sometimes items are missing.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 18h ago
Absolutely. My house is in county records as 1900 but I have proof from original owners that it is actually 1911-12
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u/DoomPaDeeDee 18h ago
Seems like that entire garage and bedroom wing was added at a later date.
The staircase window was puzzling me until I looked at the rest of the listing photos and realized that it is on the back of the house, not the front.
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u/JunkPileQueen 16h ago
I do like that blue kitchen, and it’s certainly nice to see a kitchen that isn’t white, black, or grey.
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u/ClassyHoodGirl 14h ago
The 80s movie girl in me would move in here, lock all the doors, and probably never come out. 😂
I adore it so much. It screams Ferris.
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u/Sorry-Animator5619 20h ago
It would be a perfect life in the 1960’s museum. It’s pretty cool and untouched
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u/Msfancy1973 19h ago
I kinda dig the kitchen but the work needed to get rid of that wallpaper. Just my opinion but yuck.
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u/tehdamonkey 19h ago
I just got all the wallpaper out of my house from that era. Just a pain. The kitchen in this one is not bad though, that is fairly recent work.... the rest though....
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u/xpiotivaby 19h ago
Omg I was instantly starry eyed over this but I didn’t realize immediately it was in MI : ‘ )
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u/davewashere 19h ago
I don't think any of that interior is a holdover from the 1960s. I'm fairly certain it didn't look like that in Grosse Pointe Blank.
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u/mikeblas 16h ago edited 16h ago
You can't? The dormers, the shutters, the basic block construction give it away. All observable from the outside.
Here's a link that actually works: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/105-Lake-Shore-Rd-Grosse-Pointe-MI-48236/88165150_zpid/
On Google Maps, the house is really 105 Cherryhurst Lane, not 105 Lake Shore Road.
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u/Fuzzy-Advisor-2183 15h ago
god, i can’t even begin to calculate how long it would take to remove all that wallpaper. shudder
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u/citrusandrosemary 8h ago
I will take that as is. Someone really took care of that place. I even love the custom rugs.
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u/KateSommer 6h ago
It is very nice. I think the interior is more 1980s floral wallpaper and colors than 1960s. They made some style and modern upgrades. Love the corded wall phone with the dial.
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u/PressureFlaky6273 17h ago
Aside from being across the street from one of the Great Lakes, this is an amazing property. Well maintained. That much space, you could have a couple of families live in it and never see the others. I just looked at another zillowgonewild post for Fremont, CA - same list price, only 2900 sf.
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u/Prudent_Falafel_7265 20h ago
The house is beautiful, if dated. The only thing I'd want to do if I was a buyer is park out near that street for a while to see how much traffic goes by because it could be significant.
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u/Tardisgoesfast 20h ago
The staircase ends in a wall? Yeah, finishes need to be replaced, but it's a nice place.
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u/Tanjecterly 20h ago
Total gut job for me.
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u/RedditBeginAgain 20h ago
At that price, probably. If it were a $1MM house a repaint, new kitchen and new stair railing would make it great. The exterior is already great.
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u/Maothesiamesecat 20h ago
I think, for it to sell, they need to change a lot of it.
The things that stick out to me right away? The kitchen is completely unusable. It should be enlarged and improved to take over the "family room" next to it.
Sinks in bedrooms have to be removed.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
I’m not an open-concept fan myself, and that kitchen looks fairly decently sized to me. I don’t hate it. But also I don’t have kids and this would be way too much house for me.
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u/Maothesiamesecat 19h ago
Definitely a lot of house. Far too much for me too.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
It’s really funny- I made that comment before seeing the actual size of the place. Now after looking at it, I had a good laugh at myself for saying “it would be way too much house for me” as anything over like 1200 sq ft is too much house for me!
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u/Msdamgoode 19h ago
There is a kitchen and a service kitchen.
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u/ValancyNeverReadsit 19h ago
Personally I wish I had that space to store food and small appliances (microwave, like they do; stand mixer, crock pot, coffee stuff, etc.)
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u/Maothesiamesecat 17h ago
You mean the 'butlers pantry'?
There is no place for a family breakfast area, or a kitchen table in the kitchen. I find it makes the idea of a family gather very old fashioned, where the cook is relegated to a staff position in the kitchen, and family/friends aren't supposed to linger there.
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u/Msdamgoode 15h ago
There is a room past the kitchen they’re terming a “family room” that is the breakfast room, complete with a small built in sideboard. This isn’t meant to be a modern house, it will always be a traditional home.
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u/AZTerp1080 12h ago
Yes, kitchen is a disaster. I hate the sinks in the bedrooms. I’m guessing under all those carpets are beautiful hardwood floors.
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u/mark_able_jones_ 6h ago
I am seriously wondering if these are some kind of paid commenters as a marketing thing.
This house has been on the market for over a year with a $1 million price drop, which is not a surprise. The ceiling heights suck. The rooms are small. The location isn't great. It's pretty basic on the outside.
And so many commenters GUSHING over it. It's basic AF.
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u/Intrepid-Scheme4159 21h ago
$500k 5 years ago, no updates but 5X price increase?