$89,900 for this Victorian | Maine Real Estate

my good afternoon this is carmen mcphail from united country lifestyle properties of maine and today i am sitting on the steps of 44 sherman street in island falls this queen anne victorian which was built in 1893 by george kelly is just a beautiful piece of workmanship it does need some restoration but come on inside and we will look it over so before we go inside let's take a look around the yard so this house sits on 0.9 acres plus or minus and that's a really large in town lot the other good thing about this lot is the backyard is fairly private because it's surrounded by trees this house has as i said a large backyard it does have its own septic so that is back here but there's also some nice flower plantings there's a large patch of rhubarb and if you're not from new england you don't know what rhubarb is it is a wonderfully tasting fruit that we use in pies and jellies and jams and you should try it so if you're moving to maine for the outdoor lifestyle or you're just moving north for the outdoor lifestyle there's access to the atv and snowmobile trails right here so behind me here there are a couple of apple trees and there are also some fiddlehead ferns here growing right along the house so these are the fiddlehead ferns this is what they look like when they open up usually when you eat them they're all curled and they are a main delicacy so there are three porches on this house this is the kitchen porch where you'd come and sit and wait for your bread to get done cooking when on a cool summer day so this house has everything including a manual doorbell let's go inside [Music] so here we are in the entry one of the things you're going to notice is that in the 1970s they decided to upgrade with some wood paneling but you could restore this back to plaster and it would be absolutely gorgeous the stairway itself which is a curving stairway is a piece of workmanship that i don't know you could replicate today so if you had guests in the original house you would come right into this room and this is technically the front parlor although this family always used it as the music room thus the piano it does have a lot of great features which include stained glass windows the arch doorway and this beautiful parquet floor which could easily be restored from the music room you can come directly into the formal living room and the great part is you have these pocket doors so that you could have some privacy in either room the other beautiful feature of the formal living room is this very ornate mantel around the fireplace from the formal living room you can go right here into the formal dining room so this room has beautiful wood floors again has a plate rail all the way around and a beautiful inset cabinet here as well as a china cabinet on the other wall this room also features the same stained glass windows that you'll see throughout the public spaces in this [Music] house so come on into the kitchen for those of you who are watching this online and are watching on a television and you can't see links below give us a call at 207-290-0371 and i will be happy to send you a link to the virtual tour on this house which helps you make sense of the floor plan some of the original cabinetry still exists in this house and some of the modern upgrades and i say modern in them in a funny way are the built-in flower bin and there's actually a built-in breadboard as well so as you can see we do have modern appliances here in the kitchen and we have a washer dryer hookup as well there is an entry on this side that is a mud room and then that's the side porch that we looked at earlier when we were outside so as we exit the kitchen toward the back these are the service stairs that go up to the sleeping quarters and the bathroom behind the service entrance to the upstairs is the butler's pantry this butler's pantry is actually very unique in that it houses the safe of george kelly who was the original builder and owner of this home george was a lumber baron here in maine in the late 1800s and early 1900s so this is the basement door we'll go down there last um for now we're going to walk into the cold storage room and the barn the barn has both front and rear entrances so you can drive in this side you can drive in that side and above is some great storage space so now that we've finished the first floor let's head up to the sleeping area on the second floor [Music] this is the second floor landing and we're gonna head straight into the master bedroom as you can see the architecture and everything from the sec first floor was brought right up here with it from the stained glass windows to the curved wall of the closet the workmanship in this home is evident from the master bedroom you head down this hallway and from here there are bedrooms on each side this would have been a child's bedroom [Music] it's fairly small but it does have its own closet and it is again it has the beautiful wood floors on the opposite side of the hall is a larger bedroom which would have been used typically for the guest bedroom or the oldest child and probably both the woodwork in this house is amazing we have ornate pieces we have rosetta over the doors and it just continues throughout this whole portion of the house this fourth bedroom is a little bit larger than the other child's bedroom and has a couple of twin beds in it to show that it does have more room again it has beautiful wood floors and large windows for plenty of sunlight so through this doorway is a side hallway that leads to what would have probably been uh servants quarters as you can see the woodwork and stuff changes here and is very plain so this narrower hallway actually leads to what was a sleeping porch and as you can see there are still remnants of the old swing that hung from the ceiling there that you could enjoy on a nice afternoon [Music] through this doorway is the one full bath in this home they did make some upgrades to it over the years but it could use some restoration one of the fun things that they found under the paper in this bathroom is that one of the kelly children actually wrote on the wall in pencil i'm sure they probably got in trouble for that so through this door is access to the attic and the cupola so this is the third floor attic space great place to hide things store things as you can see it does have some knob and tube wiring left and we don't know what's connected and what's disconnected and that is one of the things that would need to be taken care of in this house but the bones of this house are so good that i think it would be well worth that effort so the center of the building also has a lot of headroom in space and if you actually needed more living space you could finish this so this square space that i'm standing in is actually the bottom of the cupola there is an access hatch to go up into the cupola i would not do that until after i had finished my restoration [Music] so i'm standing in the back stairway which would have been the service stairway that we talked about when we were in the kitchen and this service stairway would have been used by the water boy and the legend of this house is it was the first house to have an indoor water run plumbing bathroom in this town [Music] so the water boy would have run up and down these stairs every day with water from the cistern in the basement so we're back in the kitchen let's go check out the basement so here i am at the bottom of the basement stairs this is a pump that would have been used to get the water out of the cistern so that you could put it in a bucket and take it all the way up to actually the third floor to put into a storage area where above the bathroom also down here you will note that these granite slabs are the original basement construction materials and they are still here after 120 years and are still fairly straight and true [Music] so the current owners have put down the plastic on the gravel floor of this basement to keep the moisture down and it's actually quite comfortable down here and quite clean over on that side you can see that there is the cistern that they have actually knocked part of the wall out of there is a furnace down here it does not currently function as far as they know this is the door to the bulkhead there's an actual trapdoor in the entry steps on the south side of the home that lifts out so that you can put things down here or take things out so less than a mile from the house is the matawam k river behind me and in the middle of this river there is an island and there's a set of falls thus the name island falls just across the mountain cape river and around the corner on route 2 is downtown island falls [Music] local conveniences include grocery store and across the street is the town office which also houses the town office for the town of crystal not far from the property in the town of island falls are pleasant lake and maniwamke lake pleasant lake is a cold water lake which has brook trout landlocked salmon and is 63 feet deep madawang cake lake is a warm water lake which has white perch and pickerel and is only 47 feet deep both lakes allow any type of motorcraft you would like [Music] island falls also has an 18-hole golf course for those who like that kind of frustration thanks again for coming to island falls with me today i hope you enjoyed your trip if you have any questions give me a call carmen mcphail united country lifestyle properties of maine 207-794-6164 or call me on my cell at seven 207-290-0371 so this house has everything including a manual doorbell let's go ahead and take a look [Laughter]

Channel: United Country Lifestyle Properties of Maine

Views: 162,314

Rating: 4.9362259 out of 5

Keywords: Maine Real Estate, United Country Lifestyle Properties of Maine, Homes For Sale, Land For Sale, Property for Sale, United Country, Island Falls, Northern Maine Home, victorian home, fixer upper, George Kelley, 6 bedroom home, queen anne victorian, 1893, 0.9 acres, 44 Sherman Street, Carmen McPhail, 44 sherman street island falls, maine, historic homes, Aroostook County

Id: NYhk3N1-gFg

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021