A 1,376 sq. ft. home with a 4’ x 18’ open covered porch on the front with 200 sq. ft. of open deck on the back (northwesterly) side of the house. The property also has a 30’ x 30’ cement slab floor garage with an unfinished “carriage house” area above the garage that can be finished as an extra apartment or guest house. This home is located in the middle of St. James just a stone’s throw from Beaver Harbor, behind the King Strang Hotel on Back Highway. This house was built as “The Bride’s Cottage” in 1893. (Joseph Beaudoin built this house for his daughter Julia and her new husband when she was married in 1893.) The builder of Archipelago Builders, Gary Damstra and his wife Marilyn, totally re-did the house and put up a new outbuilding in 1992. The Damstras carefully preserved the original character of the house while making it into a modern efficient year-round home. Even though everything inside is new (including all of the essential systems) this house still has the look and feel to it that it has had since Noni Gallagher and her husband Patrick bought it in 1930. For the last 80 years or so it has always been referred to as “Grandma Noni’s House.” (Noni lived in it for almost 50 years.) This house has two bedrooms and one full bathroom. The bathroom has a large Jacuzzi tub. This bathroom is on the lower level off a large, efficient kitchen. (The kitchen has Noni’s original wood cook stove in it.) A dining room and a living room plus a laundry room on the back of the house and the furnace room make up the balance of the first floor. Upstairs there are two bedrooms. A large office or sitting room, with a large window to the west side of the house, is at the head of the stairs. The Damstras used this room as their office and it still has Gary’s large drafting table against the west side window. Someone else would obviously remove the drafting table and make this a combination computer room/TV room/reading room at the entrance to the two bedrooms. In a closet area in this open sitting room upstairs Gary has put in the plumbing for a half bath to be installed easily upstairs. This house is not for an extended family that wants a summer place on Beaver Island. It is almost the perfect historical, Victorian cottage for someone wanting a small home in town for summer use. It could also be used, however, for a single person or a couple or a small family needing a smaller year-round home. The high-quality expensive furnishings that are appropriate for this house are not included with the sale of the real estate, but could be added as part of a package deal if someone comes to an agreement with the Damstras on a reasonable sale price. Because of the quality materials used on the refinishing, the current value of the lot in the center of town, and a fairly new outbuilding with a lot of potential, this home is priced at FIRM AT $210,000.
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