Let’s just get it out of the way: I live in this area of Casa View Haven, and I have seen this house just about every day for the past 11 years. No joke, the only change the sellers made to this house in the time I have lived in the Eastwood Park area of CVH was when they installed a wheelchair ramp.
Spoiler alert: The ramp was one of the first things to go when Jeanna and Patrick McIntyre of New Creation Group got their hands on it. Even with that gone, the home was far from eye candy.
“While we were blessed with large, arching, 50-plus-year-old trees and a good lot, the front elevation of the home itself was seriously lacking,” said Jeanna.
Not anymore. Not only did Jeanna and Patrick completely transform the outside of this 1950s post-war ranch in Casa View Haven, they did a full-on remodel of this ugly duckling from top to bottom inside.
The old soul Victorian at 4317 Worth St. is Kristen Martin’s third “flip” all of her own in Dallas.
When some people look at an old house in disrepair, all they see are its problems. But for one Dallas Realtor, old Dallas homes are all about possibility, instead.
Realtor Kristen Martin in front of the Victorian she renovated in Old East Dallas.
Kristen Martin says she’s a kindred soul with old houses, getting to know them, even naming them as she restores, repairs, and renovates them to a state even better than what they were originally.
She’s a Realtor with The Michael Group, and she’s passionate about real estate. But the properties that truly inspire her are the ones she’s buying and flipping.
A few weeks ago, we featured her old soul Victorian flip at 4317 Worth St. in our CandysDirt.com Dallas open house roundup. It is sensational! We had to know more about this woman who can make old houses sing again.
“I go in the houses and just feel them out—[the house on Worth Street] was a mess but I got it flowing well because I talked to the house and it talked back to me,” Martin said. “I have renovated three in the last year and before that, I had done three with other people.”
She wears rose-colored glasses, because all of her flips have been messes when she found them. The Worth Street house, which she purchased in April, was built in 1903 and was a little more than “rough around the edges.” The foundation, plumbing, electric, carpet, and parquet were all bad and needed replacement. The kitchen was a gut. It needed an HVAC. Cosmetically, it wasn’t much to look at, either, with an 80’s vibe going strong.
But Martin saw past all that.
“I had a feeling when I walked into it—the fireplaces and windows and wraparound porch—my jaw dropped,” she said. “I’m ahead of my time in that neighborhood because the area hasn’t made a whole revival. It’s coming back around but throughout the years, everybody has just looked at Swiss Avenue and Junius Heights [nearby].”
Blair and Chelsea Green are big fans of Flipping Out, Bravo’s reality remodeling series. This gorgeous Preston Hollow contemporary at 7141 Grand Oaks Road is their latest flip, although they don’t really ever intend to flip — it’s just worked out that way.
The couple already have very full plates. Blair is a commercial real estate attorney and Chelsea is the chief operating officer of a law firm.
“We were trying to buy our first house a few years ago and wanted to live in Dallas to be close to our jobs,” Blair said. “We either had to buy a really small house or a property that needed work. We found a house that needed some TLC and during remodeling realized we enjoyed the process.” (more…)
