Real estate agent Damon Williamson doesn’t think the little Tudor cottage at 5206 Merrimac Ave. had been updated for probably half a century. And then his client bought the home four years ago.
Built in 1930, the two-bed, two-bath Greenland Hills property was in a state of disrepair. It needed new plumbing and electrical. The floors needed replacing. The garage “was very, very close to dilapidated,” Williamson says, with rotting siding, dirt patches, and no sheetrock.
“When [the owner] bought it, the house was a complete remodel, and needed to be everything new,” Williamson says.
The owner took the house down to the studs and spent probably around $140,000 putting it back together again, Williamson says. The garage was cleaned up and updated and a rolling gate was added. Exterior trim on the house’s façade was painted or replaced. A new front door and double paned windows were installed. Inside, the owner vaulted the ceiling in the living room, installed tile in the sunroom, gutted the kitchen, and remodeled the primary bathroom.
He added all new landscaping, including a new sprinkler system, flowers, and a crape myrtle tree in the backyard. “Everything that you see around the front of the house is all new,” Williamson says, “all the beds, all the flowers, all the bushes.”
Because of the changes, not many of the home’s features are original, Williamson says. The owner kept the stained-glass details on the front-facing windows. The fireplace is original, but at some point it had been capped off and now isn’t functional. “I put my hand up there when we first looked at the house and it’s solid,” Williamson says. “Whatever’s up there is solid.” Someone could fix it if they wanted, or they could use it as more decorative piece, he says.
“The architecture is, in essence, the same” as well. The owner kept mostly the same window placement and floor plan, besides opening the kitchen and dining area and vaulting the living room ceiling. The high ceiling is unusual for a one-story home, Williamson says, and he loves how big the space feels. “You don’t have to do anything weird in order to get your furniture in there looking normal.”
Additionally, the charming front façade is the same, just cleaned up. Some of the other historic homes in the area have a “really unusual, wonky kind of front façade,” Williamson says, thanks to additions and remodels over the years that have Frankensteined the architectural styles. The Merrimac cottage still has the classic Tudor look, staying true to the era in which it was built, but with modern comforts inside.
“It’s just a cute house,” Williamson says, which is a big selling point. Its location is also ideal. It is a “true M Streets” home, the property has easy access to Central Expressway, Mockingbird, and Lower Greenville. It’s near Mockingbird Elementary, as well as restaurants, bars, and shops. The street itself doesn’t get a ton of through traffic, and plenty of people are out walking their dogs, pushing strollers, and jogging.
“It’s a very homey neighborhood feel,” Williamson says. “I love that area.”
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