1 Stephanie Avenue
Explored September 2020
Special Guest: Jordan
THIS big yellow house… where to begin. My colleague told me about seeing it while paddling on the river, she snapped a picture and sent it to me officially peaking my interest. She didn’t have an exact address or location, since from her perspective it was just a house on the river, but with a general idea I started zooming and scrolling on Google Maps. I thought I found it, surveyed the driveway on Street View, then ended up on Reddit after googling it; how could such a huge house be abandoned in the middle of the city and go largely unnoticed? Redditers were just as perplexed, but they had some details from the property real estate listing that made it all even more confusing - and irresistible. Next, I turned to a friend who works in real estate and she found me a bit more: the most recent list price was $2.3M, in September 2019 and the 1.5 acre property sold for $1.8M in January 2020. Knowing it had been purchased increased the urgency of my visit so naturally, I made sure to turn plans for a coffee date into an adventure with Jordan. When we came up to the driveway I was sad to see two or three cars, a woman clearing debris by the guest house and a man walking past the garage; it was clear that work was being done and my hopes were extinguished. Jordan wisely suggested we stroll up the driveway and ask what’s going on.. and so we did. The woman who had been clearing debris waved and greeted us, we told her we’d seen the house from the water (not exactly a lie - that is how I first saw it) and were curious. She said they were renovating it and casually asked if we’d like to go take a look! As you can see from the photos, many ceilings, walls and floors have been removed. I think it might’ve been way cooler before the work started but it was still awesome to have a (totally permitted?!) look around this huge yellow house. Because we weren’t sure how much time we actually had, I was taking quick pics, but the wide-angle iphone camera did a decent job capturing the slightly perplexing layout of the house. This beauty also has at least a couple of the biggest bathrooms I’ve ever seen. Seriously, the master bath + closet is about the size of my entire apartment. On our way out we stopped to thank the woman and her male counterpart for letting us take a look around. We talked for a few minutes and they told us there was water damage from a big leak in the roof that was just left, but that once all the walls, floors and ceilings are replaced, it will be fine. Strangely, they didn’t seem to think it was beyond repair at all. We still have some questions about the previous owners, and why the place had such an oddly restrictive previous listing.. but at least we’ve confirmed it doesn’t seem to have been a grow-op, animal hoarder situation, or gruesome murder scene that couldn’t be cleaned up!