Flipped Flair Home Returns – Tucson, AZ

Last seen on the blog in November as a trashed and thrashed fixer upper is this now-renovated 1960 Palmer & Krisel Tucson Flair Home that’s been flipped and flopped. With four bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,611 square feet sited on a 8,700 square-foot lot, the asking price on this home is $175,000.

Front of home

Selling above ask at $102,500 in January of this year, the current owner has admittedly done a lot with a small budget. They’ve cleaned the property, painted inside and out, replaced trashed baths and given the home new windows and a kitchen. Of course there are flipper hallmarks everywhere – boob lights, vinyl windows, a weird corral carved out of a kitchen doorway and bizarre placement of the master bedroom door.

Front of home - gravel matches paint colors

Out front, new dark red gravel has been added to the front yard, replacing the lighter salt & pepper gravel that in place. A lighter pink gravel serves as the driveway, and the original landscape was cleaned up. The home has been painted the same color as the driveway and yard gravel, light pink and red.

Living room 

Living room, master bedroom entry and entry hall

Living room and view to kitchen 

Inside, the rear facing living room has been floored in wood laminate, and new windows and sliders look out to the unfinished yet cleared and cleaned backyard. The entrance to the master bedroom has been relocated to the south living room wall, making couch and television placement in the room a challenge.

And where one door was added, interestingly, another was taken away. The kitchen to living room  ingress and egress has been removed and raised to a half-height wall, creating a strange portal opening exposing more of the kitchen – and the side of the to-be-installed-fridge - than before to the living area. Sometimes in an effort to open spaces up, consideration to detail is overlooked resulting in new problems being created.

Kitchen 

Kitchen 

The kitchen is now a small corral, accessed only from the family/dining room area now. Granite counters sit over shaker cabinetry, and the hanging cabinetry has been removed reducing the amount of storage space available.

Dining/family room 

Dining/family room 

The dining/family room still maintains its original clerestory windows, and serves as the central hallway accessing the three secondary bedrooms as well as the laundry area, now concealed behind a set a bi-fold doors. The former jack and jill bath between the two original secondary bedrooms has been reconfigured, with the doors to the bedrooms being removed and a new doorway now faces the dining area, an unfortunate consideration for dining guests.

Added fourth bedroom at rear of home

Secondary bedroom 

Secondary bedroom 

Guest bath

Master bedroom 

Weird master bath entry through closet - this was a flipper add-on

Master bath

The secondary bedrooms all feature boob lights and brown carpeting, both of which are improvements over previous condition. The master bedroom still features its original clerestory windows, and the configuration has been altered, with the entrance placed at the living room and the former entry converted to a closet. This new configuration also now means that the master bathroom is now accessed through the closet, which isn’t really an improvement to the floor plan.

Back of home and backyard 

Backyard

Wishing well - I wish the mid-mod gets put back into this home

The backyard has been cleared and cleaned, but otherwise is a blank slate, because the flipper handbook tells readers not to landscape a backyard as a buyer’s mind is typically made up by the time they see the house.

The improvements made to this property don’t acknowledge the history or architects behind the property, but they definitely made the property livable once again. Hopefully the new owners will choose to return the home back to its modernist roots.

Check out the full listing on Redfin.com: 1144 Wheatridge Drive

Or Zillow.com here: 1144 Wheatridge Drive

Tucson Palmer & Krisel Fixer For Sale – Tucson, AZ

Built in 1960 by Flair Homes, this midcentury Palmer & Krisel designed home is in need of some love, TLC and visioning. Originally built as a three bedroom, two bathroom home, a rear addition adds a fourth bedroom onto the property and bumps the size of the home up to 1,611 square feet. Sited on a 8,700 square foot mainly un-landscaped lot, the asking price of this home is only $95,000.

Front yard and carport

Interestingly, this is the same floorplan that we featured in Park 7 in Westminster on the 13^th, and in Paradise Palms in Las Vegas yesterday. The construction of this home is slightly different – most Palmer & Krisel-designed homes are post and beam; however, this one emulates post and beam construction but is actually constructed with CMU block. Post and beam details can be seen, specifically on the carport supports which utilize a signature Krisel parallel-board design.

The exterior of the home is well worn with a mainly unkempt gravel front yard and gravel driveway. The carport style on the Flair homes is slightly different than what is seen on most other Krisel-designed homes, with a steeply-angled shed roofline that flattens out towards the entry.

Living room, entry on the left, family room at end of hall

Inside, the living, kitchen and dining areas sit at the rear of the home, while the master and secondary bedrooms sit towards the front. The clerestories on the sides of the home appear to be intact, as does the original fireplace in the living room.

Kitchen and family/dining room

Laundry area off of family room

Minimal photos of the interior are provided; however, from what’s shown everything appears to need attention. The kitchen incorporates original cabinetry including the original hanging cabinets above the cooktop that were a hallmark of this model. The family/dining room sits adjacent to the kitchen and includes the laundry area, and original west-facing clerestories.

Secondary bedroom

Master bathroom

The master bedroom is accessed off of the entryway, and incorporates a jack-and-jill bath for guests. The secondary bedrooms are accessed off of the family/dining room, and share a jack-and-jill bathroom between them. The fourth bedroom addition is also accessed off of the family./dining room, and extends north into the backyard of the property.

This midcentury modern home definitively needs some love, care and attention but has fantastic bones and the potential to be a signature showplace. If anyone is looking for a challenge, this is it.

Check out the full listing on Redfin.com here: 1144 West Wheatridge Drive

Or Zillow here: 1144 West Wheatridge Drive

It’s Back – June’s Tucson Featured Palmer & Krisel Flipped & For Sale – Tucson, AZ

Built in 1959, this Palmer & Krisel-designed home in Tucson, AZ was first featured on the blog at the end of June as a distressed property with an asking price of $80,000. Selling and closing for $96,000 at the end of September, the property is now back on the market with an asking price of $189,000. With three bedrooms and two bathrooms, this 1,416 square-foot home sits on an 8,000 square-foot lot with a two-car carport.

With a new yellow paintjob, white gravel driveway and new red-gravel front yard, this home also boasts new white-framed windows, a Victorian style front door, and a new roof. Inside, the home has been thoroughly updated and renovated, with no effort put into salvaging any original detailing or features.

Entry has a new door that is the antithesis of midcentury modern

Living room at least still features its floor-to-ceiling windows

Now that the master bedroom door has been moved to the living room wall, furniture placement options in the room are extremely limited - there's no good place for a couch or television

The good news is that the living room retains its floor-to-ceiling glass windows, allowing the indoors to blend with the out, and the clerestories at the end of the home have remained in place without alteration. The placement of the master bedroom access has moved from the entry hall to the living room and is now in the form of double doors, which severely limits and restricts furniture placement and television placement within the living room.

The entry between the living room and kitchen has been closed off, creating an odd pass through and cul-de-sac in the kitchen

Kitchen cabintets were extended into the family room, cutting out a sliding glass door

Kitchen is slightly overscaled and traditional, losing it's former efficiency

The original kitchen was removed and replaced with traditional dark cabinetry, granite counters and stainless steel appliances. The access doorway between the kitchen and the living room has been closed off, interrupting the traffic flow. The kitchen is now a cul-de-sac that has a strange permanent opening into the living room, and has been extended into the rear family room. The large sliding door is now gone, replaced with a single swinging door which cuts down on the amount of light entering the space.

Master bathroom is visually larger but doesn't provide much net benefit

Classy floor tiles have been used in the master bathroom shower, while glass block has randomly been added

Master bedroom as viewed from living room. Note that the master bath has no door now, a strange feature to be seen from the living room

The master bathroom and closet/dressing area have been merged into a large space, and the bathroom access to the entry hall has been removed. This now leaves the entry hall as a dark and doorless narrow corridor. The master bath reads more generic, but admittedly is larger in size. There’s a large, open shower tiled in generic floor tiles, no door and a single-sink. The room actually visually appears larger, but wastes more space in lost floor plan efficiency.

Guest room

Guest room

Guest bath has been reconfigured - note placement of plumbing fixtures is so strange that the walls couldn't even accommodate a toilet-paper holder

Guest baht sink is actually smaller and tighter than what was originally in place, cutting down counter space by two-thirds. The net gain in space was a negative in this situation

Now that access to the master bath has been cut off to the entryway, the former jack-and-jill bathroom between the two guest rooms needed to be reconfigured to allow access without going through a bedroom. The bathroom now faces the kitchen through removal of the laundry area, and has been reconfigured with a long, narrow configuration and a strange placement of the water closet on one wall and the sink on an opposite one. Again the net increase in space here was zero, and the reconfiguration now creates more wasted space.

Back of home as viewed from backyard

No landscape was provided in the backyard; fence is new at least

The backyard has a new fence, and has been scraped clear of pretty much everything. Its Flipper 101 back there – the mantra is that flippers believe that a buyer has determined whether or not they’ll buy a house before they enter the backyard, therefore there is no need to landscape it. In a Palmer & Krisel, the interiors are so closely tied with the exteriors that ignoring the backyard is a tough sell.

The home is definitely move-in ready. The tweaks to the floorplan didn’t help the home much and created just as many problems, if not more, than they mistakenly thought that they would solve. It’s the only Palmer & Krisel for sale in Tucson right now, so if it’s a must have, we wish the buyers well and can’t wait to see what they do to the space.

Check out the full listing on Redfin.com here: 316 W Wheatridge Drive

Or Zillow.com here: 316 W Wheatridge Drive

1959 Tucson Palmer & Krisel For Sale – Incredible Restoration Opportunity

Priced at only $80,000 is this 1959 Palmer & Krisel-designed home in Tucson, Arizona. This is the lowest priced Palmer & Krisel-designed home on the market in the country right now, and a great opportunity for a new owner to bring this home back to its mid-century beauty. This 1,416 square-foot home features three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two-car carport on an 8,000 square-foot lot in the Casas Adobes area of town.

Every square inch of this block-constructed home needs attention. It’s rough all around. There’s no real landscape, front or back. There’s not even a driveway, but that’s not that uncommon for Tucson. The exterior of the home exudes classic Krisel design, with high bands of windows, clerestories on the ends of the home, and double carport supports. Unlike most Palmer & Krisel homes, this subdivision was built with block construction, rather than the typical post and beam.

The living, kitchen and family rooms are all at the rear of the home, while the master and secondary bedrooms are at the front. The living room features a prominent concrete block fireplace, signature Krisel clerestories and vaulted ceilings. The Kitchen looks pretty rough – the original cabinets are all still in place, but very well worn. These could definitely be sanded and restored back to original shape, but not without effort. The appliances and counters aren’t original to the home, and all look like they need o be addressed.

Living Room

Kitchen with original cabinetry

Kitchen with original cabinetry

Family Room

The master bathroom features the original sink, cabinetry, mirror and medicine cabinets, with mid-century saucer pulls, and was built jack-and-jill style, with access to the entry hall and the bedroom. The countertop and tilework in the stall shower are not original to the home. The secondary bathroom sits between the secondary bedrooms jack-and-jill style, and is pretty rough shape, with no original features left.

The listing agent does not appear to be aware of the architectural background of this home, and is unfortunately marketing this home to investors rather than restorationists or architectural buffs. It definitely needs lots of work, but we know how fantastic these homes can shine if they’re brought back to their modernist roots.

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom with original cabinetry & drawer pulls

Backyard

Check out the Redfin Listing here: 1316 West Wheatridge

Or Zillow here: 1316 West Wheatridge