How a renovation transformed my family's historic home

The pastel green-and-purple color scheme on the estate at 1101 River Road in Melbourne Beach, Florida, feels as summery as the property itself. The grand manor and three guest houses, hidden beneath palms and shady oaks and connected through manicured grounds, reflect the paradisical nature of Brevard County's barrier island.

When my family owned it until the mid-1990s, the buildings were white, and in places, the paint was peeling or growing dingy. The immense size, concrete fountains, brick pathways and black wrought-iron fencing represented a more austere formalism, a relic of an era already bygone by the time of my childhood.

The crumbling gothic manor was an inspiring place for a young boy whose greatest passion was ghost stories. Everywhere one turned, some unkempt corner could become the dusty gateway to another world. I was unconcerned with things like comfort, maintenance and livability.

Whoever buys it will likely care more about functionality than phantoms. The 1.5-acre estate hit the market in July for $6.3 million, with the sale being handled by Stephanie Moss Dandridge and her son Jamie Dandridge of One Sotheby’s International Realty.

Now, as a reporter covering the real estate of Central Florida, the opportunity to return for the first time in more than 30 years in a professional capacity to the place where I spent my youth was too good to pass up. Regardless of my connection to it, the luxurious property coming up for sale after several decades would warrant coverage.

What I found was that the dark, mysterious, Southern gothic mansion I had known was gone. In its place stood a bright, welcoming, tropical villa, waiting to create an entirely different genre of memories.

The estate sits on the eastern bank of the Indian River Lagoon. A half-mile of sleepy, old Florida neighborhood lies between the home and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.

The main house sets the tone for the property. The 5,266-square-foot, two-story mansion is designed in a Coastal Colonial style, combining elements of formal Colonial design with a focus on outdoor living spaces and Caribbean flair.

Inside, every possible space has been divided for sitting or gathering. The kitchen is open to the living room and attached to an airy breakfast nook. Upstairs, hallways between rooms have become foyers for reading or chatting with a small group.

Color is a defining quality throughout, with vibrant shades setting off rooms and spaces.

The western-facing primary bedroom upstairs opens to a balcony with intricate wooden railings, giving sunset views of the river and the property's boat dock.

Another balcony and a roof deck over the dining room look out onto the backyard. And every exterior wall features windows, giving the four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom home both views and natural light.

The guest houses similarly embrace their setting with different flavors of coastal living. The 1,657-square-foot Middle Cottage goes for a more traditionally Colonial feel, with subtle blue hues matched by dark wood flooring and furnishings. The house features two bedrooms, including one upstairs with its own balcony.

The single bedroom of the East Cottage also gets a balcony. The 1,176-square-foot interior has been given a more Bahamian beach feel, with primary colors used as tropical accents.

A Chicago red brick wall topped with black wrought-iron fencing rings much of the property. Brick walkways connect each of the homes through the backyard, winding beneath century-old mango trees and past fountains and ponds, including a self-sustaining koi pond.

Bricks also surround the saltwater in-ground pool, and lead to the Pool House, a studio-style guest house that is currently outfitted as a gym and golf simulator. Beside the pool, an equipment shed has been transformed into an outdoor kitchen and seating area.

Records for the property are spotty, but the house was built in 1925 by Mark and Ella Oliver. My grandfather, John “Jack” Fraser, bought the home in 1950, again for an amount that is missing from the record. He moved into it with my grandmother, Jacqueline “Dac” Edel Fraser, after the birth of my father in 1951.

The couple went on to purchase the other houses around theirs. The house known as the East Cottage was to us known as the Kent House for its owner when it was bought. They collected the properties into an acre and transformed the grounds with the walkways, the back patio and the pool that is there today.

Jack died when my father was around 8.

The estate was the gathering place for holidays. Easter was an enormous meal, one of the few occasions that called for eating in the formal dining room, capped off by the chocolate sauce my grandmother would spend the day stirring. Christmas covered the floor of one whole room in presents. And birthday pool parties were the invitation all the kids in class looked forward to.

But in the time I spent with the house, I only saw it decay. I made frequent visits on weekends and spent most days there during the summers. Stairs got creakier, sections of the grounds grew more overgrown, and the musty smell grew mustier.

Eerie and enigmatic spaces sparked my imagination. One room, known to us as the "Red Room," had to be passed through to get to my grandmother’s bedroom. The room had no lights and no windows, just a Victorian four-poster bed in the shadows.

A garden bed was covered in a bush of thorny vines probably four feet high, creating an adventure out of walking around its brick enclosure.

But degradation aside, my family loved the house. We thought of it as both a sanctuary and a venue for entertaining. Mostly, we thought of it as ours.

Without getting into family drama, we had to sell the property after my grandmother died in 1994, when I was 14. Because of its state of disrepair and some liens on the estate, it was sold for $555,000, according to property appraiser records.

The Moores, the family who bought the home from mine, “stripped it down to the studs,” according to Jamie Dandridge, Stephanie’s son and co-agent on the home. In the main house, the interior was nearly completely gutted, and the transformational effect can't be overstated.

The kitchen floor was raised to be even with the rest of the house, something I only know because the step I used to trip on as a child was gone. The wall separating the kitchen from the living room was opened.

The stairs were moved and enter the second floor from an entirely different angle. While the primary bedroom is roughly the size and shape I remember, the other upstairs bedrooms have been reimagined completely. The Red Room is erased, the space now a walkthrough closet and part of a jack-and-jill suite.

But the Moores strived to preserve many original elements of the house, said Kim Deffebach, one of the current owners who bought it next. (The Moores were unavailable for comment on this story.)

The flooring is still the oak I knew. They had the molding removed, refinished and returned. They kept the original cypress wood that was used in the ceiling and the wainscoting.

The Italian marble fireplaces with their carved figureheads were kept in the living room, the primary bedroom and the room that is now the lounge. (I don’t know what we called it. As far as I knew, it was only used for Christmas, though my sister said that my grandmother also played bridge in there.)

“My understanding is that they kept everything,” Deffebach said. We were unable to acquire totals for the renovations, but Deffebach said she believes the number must have been in the millions. “It took a lot of money and a lot of upkeep," she said.

Kim met her husband, Bud, on her first day of college at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He brought her to his hometown of Indialantic, just north of Melbourne Beach, in 1985 when Kim was 18.

“He said, ‘Let me show you this house that I have loved since I was a kid,’” Kim said. The two took a bike ride past what he then knew as the Fraser house.

Deffebach said that owning the home didn’t even occur to them at the time. “I was a freshman in college,” she said. The couple did go on to build their own home in the 1990s in Melbourne Beach, with Bud working in international patent licensing.

Founder’s Day is a massive annual celebration in town that takes over Ryckman Park across the street from the estate. One May in the early 2000s, when their children were roughly 2 and 4, the Deffebachs were on their way to the party.

“We, like everyone, would drive the block of First Avenue to look at the house,” Kim said.

That year, there was a For Sale sign. Bud immediately wanted to make an offer, but Kim was hesitant because of the size. “I was, like, ‘Are you kidding? With the kids and everything we would have to do?’”

They did wind up making an offer that was rejected. The Moores were seeking more than $4 million. But a year later, the price came down to “within a stone’s throw [of their offer],” Kim said.

The Deffebachs closed on the house for $2.75 million in June 2004, according to county records.

Over the years, the Deffebachs made their own improvements to the property, including a metal roof on the main house and renovations to the sewer system. They also purchased the half-acre lot to the east, which had been a wild morass when I was child, mostly used for playing jungle adventures.

They raised two children on the estate, the youngest of whom was married in August.

Now, they have a smaller house in Melbourne, plus a home in Montana, and a boat that they spend time in. Maintaining the large property of my grandmother’s old house “is too much with us only being there a couple months a year,” Kim said.

Kim wants to see the house go to another family that is ready to build all new memories in it. “Our kids are launched,” she said. “It’s time to pass it on to … somebody who will love it as much as we did.”

The Deffebachs owned the home for 21 years, seven more than I had it. They did not know the house I did. They don’t picture my Uncle Steve (my dad’s best friend but not a blood relative) living in the Pool House. They don’t see my granny sitting in the chair she needlepointed, or even remember tripping on the kitchen step.

To them, it was a different, brighter home. Each corner has its own association, and recalls its own moment of significance.

“Selling the house is bittersweet,” Kim said to me. “You know it’s a special place.”