Rescuing a white elephant... Face lift transforms appearance of a good house that wouldn't sell.
By Nancy H. Curtis 
Of The Journal staff
On paper, the house seemed like a winner. It had four bedrooms, two full baths and two half baths, a large, open, living-dining area on the first floor with a corner fireplace, plenty of windows, and an open stairway. All this on a large lot on Lake Drive in Whitefish Bay. So why, after two years, was it still for sale?
The main reason, says new owner Wendy Gahn, is because its exterior resembled a custard stand. What was contemporary in 1951 was just plain ugly in 1991.
"I had driven past many times and kept thinking the house could have potential if someone would just change that flat roof and take that balcony off the front. It looked like a custard stand or maybe a filling station," Gahn says.
In fact, many Milwaukee-area residents probably have driven past the home at 4621 N. Lake Drive at some time or another. But if you haven't seen it in the past few months, you wouldn't recognize it. Froze Design-Build, Inc. has turned the former flat-roofed red-brick and gray eyesore into a white classic contemporary.
It will be one of 20 homes on the Metropolitan Builders Association Fall Remodelors Tour Saturday and next Sunday.
Real estate agent Katie Falk of Federated Realty had the listing on the home at the time it sold. She says the house originally was offered at $495, 000, a price set by the sellers. When she took on the listing, it was priced at $450,000. As months went by, the house remained unsold and the price kept falling. The bank holding the mortgage eventually foreclosed.
After much thinking, planning and figuring, Gahn offered $205,000 for the house-listed then at $249, 000-and got it, intending to have it remodeled and put back on the market as soon as possible.
"I had been looking for something to remodel for 2 ½ or 3 years," Gahn says. "But this house originally was out of my price range." Although Gahn was undertaking remodeling projects in her own home, she never before had bought a house to remodel, then sell.
Gahn is married and is the mother of four children younger than 7.
"I wanted to take on a project like this because I knew it was something I could do. I could plan and make decisions and supervise while still being a full-time mom. My kids were even able to get involved. And it gave me a creative, professional outlet.
 Her original plan was to use this first project to get her feet wet; profit was not the overriding concern. But with the cost of the house plus almost $190, 000 more in improvements, it now seems that if she sells it close to the original asking price, she can make a nice return on her investment. Then she plans to turn around and take another house that needs work.
Gahn bought the house in February; remodeling work began the third week in March. The final landscaping and driveway work were completed in mid-September, and the house is officially on the market.
All along, she had an idea of how the house should look.
"I could see it in my mind-it was like a dream. I knew the potential was there." When she originally talked with five design and remodeling firms, she had a shopping list of changes she wanted included in their plans. Her ideas were to:
- Eliminate the flat roof.
- Change the front windows both upstairs and down so that they open.
- Remove the second story balcony and the doors in the bedrooms that led to the balcony.
- Add a foyer so that there would be a proper place to greet guests as well as a way to enter the garage from the house.
- Change the front exterior entry to a more appropriate size and style.
"I got the drawings from all the designers, and I liked Dick's best," she says, referring to those submitted by Richard Froze. "He was the only one who did everything I asked. Then I talked with other people he had worked for and checked his record. He was the perfect person to do it for me."
To Froze, the job presented a big challenge.
The design came quickly to me I the first 15 minutes I stood in front of it," he says. The exterior façade needed a complete change. We didn't want it to resemble the original structure in any way.
His firm stayed on budge very well until he found structural flaws. For example, a new dining room ceiling was needed because of extensive water damage from the bathroom above.
"Someone stepping into the whirlpool could have found themselves suddenly in the middle of the dining room," Gahn says.
In addition, some mechanical defects had to be fixed along the way, and some plumbing and electrical work brought up to code.
"The house just wasn't well constructed," Froze says. "We had a lot of fixing to do to resolve that."
The greatest amount of work was done to the exterior, which now is of smooth white stucco; the entryway, which has a covered area set off by a column and tile-floored foyer; the roof, which is angled; and the yard, extensively landscaped with a new circular drive.
Inside, the living room no longer has a beamed ceiling and the ledge along the fireplace was widened, both to meet code and to allow seating. New carpeting is in neutral blush-toned beige called "conch."
The back porch that had been of stained wood with an art deco floor is now a sunroom and dining area off the kitchen, with white flooring and walls. The kitchen was cleaned up, refloored |
