the heinlein house
Apr. 20th, 2009 09:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaWe found out about ten days ago that the house that Heinlein built here in Colorado Springs at 1776 Mesa was for sale. Yesterday we went to see it. We went with moderate hope (living in the Heinlein House would have enormous cachet) but not much faith that it would really fit our needs. After some discussion we decided that we were correct, it really was not a good fit for us, but it was a very interesting experience.
The house was originally one floor, on a large wooded lot (read big mucking CANYON in the back yard). The house was tripled in size by subsequent owners who finished the double garage and put a second story over the whole resulting house. We had hoped that the bomb shelter (famous from Farnham's Freehold) might be made into a usable room - but it was clear it could not. Kent went down the rickety wooden steps while the agent plugged in the power line that gave light to a tiny room carved out of the middle of a 15' x 20' concrete block. Take three feet of concrete off each side and that leaves you a room about 9' by 14' with a low ceiling and a hatchway door. Nice root cellar, nice wine cellar, nice bomb shelter - not good for anything else.
There was loads of living and entertaining space (big sunny music room, living/dining great room, den, study, upstairs living room, separate breakfast room), but very little bedroom space. The original house apparently had only one bedroom (on the main floor) and it could be called spacious only in comparison to accomodation aboard a battleship. If you put a double bed in the room you would have just about exactly a foot and a half on all sides between bed and wall. A master bedroom and two other bedrooms upstairs - but the combination of having to do so many stairs along with the outside maintenance (a lovely system of three conjoined ponds, but is some disrepair - as was most of the outside property) let us shake our heads and say, no. Nice but no thanks.
Still, if there's anyone out there looking to retire to the best climate in the world and live in a house with a great literary history, let us know and we'll introduce you to the real estate agaent.
The house was originally one floor, on a large wooded lot (read big mucking CANYON in the back yard). The house was tripled in size by subsequent owners who finished the double garage and put a second story over the whole resulting house. We had hoped that the bomb shelter (famous from Farnham's Freehold) might be made into a usable room - but it was clear it could not. Kent went down the rickety wooden steps while the agent plugged in the power line that gave light to a tiny room carved out of the middle of a 15' x 20' concrete block. Take three feet of concrete off each side and that leaves you a room about 9' by 14' with a low ceiling and a hatchway door. Nice root cellar, nice wine cellar, nice bomb shelter - not good for anything else.
There was loads of living and entertaining space (big sunny music room, living/dining great room, den, study, upstairs living room, separate breakfast room), but very little bedroom space. The original house apparently had only one bedroom (on the main floor) and it could be called spacious only in comparison to accomodation aboard a battleship. If you put a double bed in the room you would have just about exactly a foot and a half on all sides between bed and wall. A master bedroom and two other bedrooms upstairs - but the combination of having to do so many stairs along with the outside maintenance (a lovely system of three conjoined ponds, but is some disrepair - as was most of the outside property) let us shake our heads and say, no. Nice but no thanks.
Still, if there's anyone out there looking to retire to the best climate in the world and live in a house with a great literary history, let us know and we'll introduce you to the real estate agaent.
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Date: 2009-04-28 08:11 pm (UTC)From looking at the original plans, I can see that what the realtor said was the "master bedroom" is actually the study. What was the master bedroom and nursery are now a large pleasant breakfast room with stairs going up to the upstairs living room. The only built-ins left that I could see were an end table in the living/dining room, some bookshelves, and the pocket doors and closets. The indoor garden is still there and filled with potted plants. The double garage has been turned into a large study. The size of the living/dining room almost doubled with an addition onto the front. The swinging panel between kitchen and dining room for the table is no longer in evidence. And there's an entire 'nother floor with three bedrooms, two baths, living room, and music room build above the whole ground floor layout.
However, the original house is clearly there, not destroyed as Crais conjectures - just extended and built onto. And the bomb shelter is there as well, although the stairs are now quite rickety and power is provided by an extention cord up to the back porch.
Thanks for sharing the articles.