GARDENS OF EDEN – OR HELL?
WHAT THEY BOUGHT: Forest Hills Gardens five-bedroom Colonial, $1.3M
SEARCH TIME: Two months
LIKE an exotic treasure protected by a glass wall, Forest Hills Gardens was just beyond Wendy Lurrie’s financial reach. She could look, but never touch.
Eventually, however, the money gods smiled upon her. After years of living just outside the borders of the private community, Wendy purchased a home inside the Gardens. For her, it was a dream come true. Trouble was, to her family – husband Paul and children Matthew, 16, and Olivia, 12 – it was a house of horrors.
When the Lurries first visited the house last fall, they hated its teensy rooms and scary, blacked-out windows so much that Wendy vowed it would never be theirs. “Mom said we’d never, ever live in this house,” Olivia recalls. “It was really claustrophobic.”
Ah, but take a frenzied market, combine it with that rare real-estate quality called “vision” and add a dash of mother’s instinct, and some promises are meant to be broken – for the best.
Wendy and Paul first arrived in Forest Hills in 1989, having fled Manhattan for more space and, after a stint in Brooklyn, still craving square footage. They landed a rental in upscale Forest Hills Gardens, a private enclave of 850 homes.
“We loved the neighborhood,” says Paul, who works at the American Institute of Physics. “It’s beautiful, it’s quiet.”
After seven years, however, the Lurries felt it was time to stop paying rent and start building equity.
“Forest Hills Gardens was way beyond our means,” says Wendy, director of business development at Draft, an advertising firm. Instead, they nabbed a four-bedroom home for $425,000 just a few blocks away.
Once they moved in, the Lurries did a ton of work on the house.
“Down to the studs,” Wendy describes. “It was the coffee-maker-in-the-bathroom kind of renovation.”
“Years from now I’ll smell plaster and think of my adolescence,” quips Matthew, who is yet again grudgingly living through renovations now. But more about that later.
Everyone loved the house, but Wendy wasn’t keen on the location on a busy street. And as careers solidified and housing values in Forest Hills skyrocketed, Wendy realized that her dream of Forest Hills Gardens was now within her reach. By September 2004, she was ready to take the plunge.
“I wanted to do it while the kids were still at home,” she says. “If I waited a few more years, what’s the point?”
Thinking they could sell their house for about $1 million – which they eventually did – the Lurries began looking for a home in the Gardens. Wendy wanted a place “with better presence,” she says, than their old pad.
Working with their broker, Linda Weiss of Terrace Realty, there wasn’t much to look at in their price range of $1.3 million or so. Most homes were too expensive, others too small. And then there was the horrifying house on a corner lot, where the owner had covered the windows with plastic, drapes and shutters.
“It was like Batman’s cave’s basement,” Matthew says.
“It was very uncomfortable, very intimidating,” Wendy concedes.
“Everyone hated it,” Olivia says. “Matthew and Dad hated it triple.”
Weiss, however, saw potential.
“It was a corner house, a center hall Colonial, on a good-sized lot,” she says. “I really felt that the value was there; within two or three years, she could make a huge profit on the house.”
Weiss encouraged Wendy to view the house again – without her naysaying family.
“You could feel the prices going up,” Wendy recalls. “I saw, with the right professional help, we could make it really beautiful.”
With Paul’s reluctant – but trusting! – consent, Wendy made a full-price offer of $1.275 million. After a complicated deal, in which the seller demanded more money, they settled on a price of $1.3 million.
Their January closing day was not a happy one, to say the least. “There was no joy in the kingdom,” Wendy sighs. “There was sulking and crying.”
Over the next few months, the Lurries began serious renovations, from redoing the bathrooms to knocking down walls.
The intent was to do the major work before moving in. By April, however, with their buyers eager to move into their house, the Lurries moved into their new abode, mid-construction.
At first, the only working bathroom was in the basement, and since the dining room was under construction, the family was forced to walk out the front door and in through a side door in order to use it.
“It was pretty rugged,” Wendy says.
Next up are renovations on the kitchen and the basement. As the dust settles, however, the Lurries are seeing their spacious and colorful home in a new light.
“I like it,” says Olivia of her house and, especially, her large, red bedroom with a walk-in closet. Plus, she notes, her best friend lives down the block, “and everyone meets up to play tag.”
“It’s definitely a neighborhood – not just a bunch of houses,” says Paul of the new digs. “You can be out almost anywhere and people will say hello to you.”
Only Matthew remains unconvinced. “I liked my old room,” he says. “And my old house.”
E-mail: lkeys@nypost.com