House Updates 11 -- River Street, Ozark, Arkansas
From plenty of pennies to pretty in pink, this 1926 Arkansas River house has seen a lot of change.
I included it in a 2021 April Fool post of unusual things I had spotted in real estate listings because it had a feature floor comprised entirely of polyurethaned pennies.
It must have taken less time to demolish, because now that room looks like this:
After the house sold in June 2021, the construction trucks rolled in, and as Google Street View documents it, the penny house that used to look like this...
soon looked like this:
It went from light yellow to the palest pink, with all new doors, windows, and porch railings.
The original wooden door and sidelights were replaced with more contemporary versions:
An even bigger change took place in the living room...
the fireplace wall is gone!
Below is another angle of it before:
Here is how it looks now that the living room and kitchen are open to each other.
What's more, the pretty new kitchen tile and pendant lights are pink!
Guess what we're going to decorate around? This living room is just waiting for its new look.
If it were mine, it would get some fresh color too, just not pink. Don't want to skew too Barbie.
{source}
By the way, before the remodel, the living room used to be much more monotone:
The kitchen, however, has always made a color statement:
And ironically, the family room was already pink:
Now it has a vaulted ceiling and a much clearer view:
The hallway between the family room and kitchen has the stairs to the lower level.
The stairs are unfinished, but the rest of the space already has great entertaining potential...
especially compared to how it used to look:
Back on the upper floor, there's a spiffy new powder room (and pink closet doors) beside the main set of stairs.
That area used to look like this:
The new stairs have taken a turn to make the bathroom possible:
The house used to have four bedrooms and four bathrooms in 3,467 square feet. Today it has one more bedroom (the old room with the pennies now has a closet), and an additional 300 square feet (in the basement area, I'm guessing).
The exterior of the house really shows how dramatic the renovations were:
It used to look like this:
It's still pretty proud of that view, though:
I'm not sure what's going on with those goats, but the grass is definitely greener for this house now.
{source}
The city of Ozark was founded in 1836 -- 90 years before the house was built on the river bank. Fittingly, the name Ozark comes from the French "aux arc" (say it fast) which means "at the bend." Ozark is at the bend of the Arkansas River.
But in 1897, River Street was Water Street and hadn't yet expanded East.
{source}
Just like Sanborn needed to update its map, the Ozark Chamber of Commerce will have to change their profile picture, now that the River Street house is known for pink instead of pennies.
{source}
The listing is here.
P.S. Mr. If It Were Mine was too busy to make the map overlay this week, but apparently he wasn't too busy to show me how much our cat resembles the Australian Olympic break dancer. Go figure.