After living here for more than 12 years, we are moving to Portland, Oregon. We have to sell our suburban homestead, where we have invested thousands of hours and dollars into making the place more comfortable, functional and sustainable. We never planned to leave, but we must, and we need to find a new family to enjoy what we've started. There's a lot you can do with an acre, and we've done quite a bit!
The property is at 102 Winston Way in Waunakee, WI 53597. (You can see some more interior pictures by the official Stark photographer at the preceding link to our official MLS listing.)
The image on Google maps is a couple of years old--it shows the raised bed garden and the solar hot water, but not the new landscaping in the front and the new roof.
Waunakee is just north of Madison and is a great place to live, with excellent schools. We live close to the middle school, high school, village library, one of the elementary schools and the intermediate school. Check out the map link: we are an easy walking distance to all of these places. If you have kids, their ability to get themselves to school and activities is a significant quality of life issue for the parents!
This is a two level ranch home with an open floor plan. You walk into an entry area that looks over to the living room--a huge space with a vaulted ceiling.
The kitchen and dining area are completely open to each other, and mostly open to the living room. Behind a pocket door of solid oak, there is a hallway with three bedrooms and two baths. There is also one bedroom and one bath downstairs. The master bath and downstairs bath have showers, the second upstairs bathroom has a new oversized tub as well as a shower.
The lower level is a walkout basement, with a south facing sliding door providing plenty of light, and substantial windows in most rooms. Half is finished (family room, bedroom/office, bathroom) and about half is unfinished (big wood shop, pottery area, laundry room, lots of storage.
The kitchen is huge, with the original oak cabinets. We have made many improvements to the property, and planned to live in it forever. We installed a geothermal heating and cooling system last summer, solar hot water several years ago, a whole house fan a few years back and a new roof just this spring. The main living area has hardwood flooring that we just got refinished. The non-master bedrooms have hardwood flooring that we installed a few years ago.
We have extensive edible landscaping, with three apple trees, a peach tree, a pie cherry tree, a paw-paw tree (with fruit for the first time this year!), maybe a dozen blueberries, raspberries, hardy "Prime-Jim" blackberries, a blackcurrant bush, jerusalem artichokes in abundance, asparagus and winecap stropharia mushrooms spreading throughout the yards of wood chips I trucked into a shady part of the property.
We have a big formal raised bed garden, with the beds made of 2' x 2' concrete patio blocks on end--the most comfortable gardening ever!. There are 4 beds made like this, each L shaped and 3' wide, 9' long (18' total, sort of). You can see it on the satellite photo linked above. The inner L shaped beds are about 2' tall and built of black locust. We also have 3 more typical raised beds, each 4' x 12', that are just made of boards, and every year I use the large area in the "back back" for pumpkins, sweet corn, sprawling tomatoes and edamame. The only chemical we've used on our property in over a decade is occasionally some glyphosphate. The soil here started out pretty good and has become simply amazing.
When we put in the geothermal HVAC they drilled four 150' deep wells in our front yard, and we took that as an opportunity to completely re-landscape. Formecology did the rockwork and we did the earthmoving, putting in a new lawn, a hugelkultur berm and over 2000 bulbs and a couple dozen fancy day lilies.
The house has an attached 2 car garage and in the back is a 45 foot by 45 foot outbuilding. Yes, it's an airplane hangar--we are on the Waunakee airstrip. No worries about noise--a couple of Harley motorcycles driving by make more noise, and for longer, than a little 4-seater Cessna taking off. Most days there are no planes at all--most of the pilots are retired dudes who fly on sunny Saturdays in good weather only. Being on the "airport" is how this typical looking ranch home has a one acre lot. We have a really nice guy currently paying us to store his airplane in the hangar, and he doesn't mind all of our stuff in there as well.
What I love about our house is that you see it from the street and think "Oh, that's a nice house." Then when you walk in the front door you think "This is bigger than I thought." Finally, when you walk through the living room and look out the south facing windows you think "Wow!"
