Eden Prairie house with postmodern look ‘that never goes out of style’ listed for $629,900

Renae and Bill Dentinger loved their home so much that they made it part of their wedding day.

The two said their vows under an arch in front of the wooded backyard as family and friends watched from the three-tier deck. For food, they served fresh slices of pizzas from a custom oven Bill Dentinger designed for the patio.

Spanning 3,785 square feet on just under an acre of land, the house was large enough to accommodate more than 120 guests for the occasion, Dentinger said. The house symbolizes the couple’s second chance at love after their former spouses died, and became a place to meld their families, including her two children and his three.

“We opened up the house and had lots of people outside. On the three levels of the deck, we had music and dancing, pizzas [cooking] down below,” Renae Dentinger said. “The woods made it feel like there weren’t any houses next to us.”

Now ready to retire to their cabin in Wisconsin, the couple want to pass on the four-bedroom, four-bathroom Eden Prairie house to a new family to create their own memories.

“It’s very easy to host people and parking for them is easy. That’s one of the reasons we bought it,” Bill Dentinger said. “We were at that time in our life.”

The house is on the market for $629,900, just above the average price for homes in Eden Prairie, according to data from the Minneapolis Area Realtors. By square footage, though, it is cheaper at $166, compared with $219. Overall, average sales prices in Eden Prairie have risen by 13.5% since last year.

With a classic 1980s postmodern look, it has tall, dramatic, cathedral-like ceilings that meet at a stark point that a triangular window in the living room matches.

The architectural style of the house rejects midcentury modernism, opting for asymmetric and whimsical designs. That wasn’t something Renae Dentinger was initially drawn to, but it grew on her eventually.

“It took me a couple of times before coming, before I knew this is where I wanted to live,” she said. “It’s like that classic shirt you’ve had for 20 years that you can wear all the time because it has a look that never goes out of style.”

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The two made the house their own with updates. They refinished the white oak floors, installed a new roof and remodeled the upstairs bathrooms with luxurious updates. That included a double vanity, dressing table, rain shower and a soaking tub in the primary bathroom. In the kitchen, the couple updated appliances, and put in new carpet throughout the house.

All the updates were worth it, as their family used every bit of space.

“It worked well for what we needed. We had four kids coming back from college during the summer,” Renae Dentinger said. “They were able to hang out in the downstairs where we hardly ever went.”

By far, the best feature of the house is its backyard and proximity to nature, the Dentingers said. The backyard is low-maintenance, with their last project a rebuilding of a retaining wall.

“It’s very peaceful back where we are. You really don’t hear much except for wildlife,” he said. “You see a lot of birds and squirrels. We’ll get up in the morning, and we’ll see five to six deer back there, and you walk out, and they stay there. We have the squad of 11 turkeys that we see twice a day.”

Renae Dentinger, a longtime resident of Eden Prairie, said she won’t just miss the family and friends in the area but everything the city has to offer, from lakes with walking paths to shopping and restaurants nearby.

“I’m going to miss walking around here. By our cabin, it’s going to be a lot of walking along farm roads,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem practical to have such a big house when we’re going to be up at our cabin most of the time.”

As of publication, this house has an offer with contingency. Laura Olivier (952-290-3766, laura.olivier@cbburnet.com) of Coldwell Banker Realty has the $629,900 listing.