1900 Lowry Hill home with ‘every single inch’ remodeled lists for $1.15 million

When Dani Deering first entered the 1900 Minneapolis house, it looked to her like it hadn’t been updated since the 1970s. But she immediately sensed the home’s potential.

“This house had really good bones and the energy was really good here,” she said. “The moment I walked in, I knew what I wanted it to look like.”

Over the next four years, she updated “literally every single inch” of the nearly 4,100-square-foot house. It got a new kitchen and primary bedroom, as well as a second laundry area upstairs and general updating throughout. Structural issues — the upstairs bathtub leaked through the kitchen ceiling; the only fully functional bathroom was in the basement — were repaired.

Now she’s planning to move in with her partner and has put the house on the market for $1.15 million.

The house is in the Lowry Hill neighborhood, a community with a lot of large, stately homes, many of them built around the turn of the 20th century by prominent milling and lumber families. The area was named for Thomas Lowry (1843-1909), a real estate investor who bought property there.

Deering, an attorney, said she’s also good at decorating and design. After she bought the house in 2015, she and her son, who was then in high school, lived in an apartment while making some improvements. They moved in six months later.

Deering did some of the remodeling work herself, including installing hickory flooring throughout. “I was kind of doing some weekend warrior stuff,” she said.

She also hired professionals, who built a two-story addition. The kitchen is on the ground floor of the addition, below the second-floor primary bedroom. The house’s original “tiny, U-shaped kitchen” became a family room.

Deering loves to cook, so she designed a cook’s kitchen: three ovens (gas, convection, microwave) and a Viking stove (”which I love, love, love,” she said). She had a custom-made matching hood installed over the stove. There’s a quartz center island with seating, and a subway-tile backsplash.

“It’s always important to have a nice space to cook; everybody gathers in the kitchen and you can talk to people while you’re cooking,” she said.

The dining room sports a bay window. The living room features a wood-burning fireplace and opens to a four-season sunroom. Formerly part of the front porch, the sunroom was closed off by a previous owner. Deering likes to sit out there to read or work and gaze at flowers growing in the copper flower box that runs across the front of the house.

Also on the first floor is a big mud room and a small seating area that is next to a staircase with a carved wooden newel post. The area is currently occupied by Deering’s son’s piano.

The second-floor primary suite has windows on three sides. In addition to the shower, there’s a tub next to a bay window (with frosted glass) that echoes the dining room bay window immediately below it.

The second floor also contains two other bedrooms — one of which Deering used as a den with a TV — that share a bathroom and a small office that could alternately be used as a nursery. At the end of the long, narrow hallway is a laundry closet, separated from the hall by doors with opaque glass panels. When the light is on in the laundry area and the doors are closed, “a nice, warm light” shines through the glass, serving as a sort of hallway nightlight, she said.

The basement contains another laundry room as well as a family room, bathroom, bar and crawl space for storage.

The top floor, which was used as Deering’s son’s bedroom, is currently staged as another entertainment area. There’s a “nice, quiet cove” in a dormer space that can be used for an office, a three-quarter bathroom, and a kitchenette with a sink and small refrigerator.

The back yard is fenced and landscaped.

“The house is like a big hug,” Deering said. “We totally enjoyed it. Even more so because [the decor] is truly my imagination come to life. ... Now it’s time for someone else to come and live in it.”

Cari Ann Carter of Edina Realty (1-612-926-9999, CariAnnCarter@edinarealty.com) has the $1.15 million listing.