Tucson realtor Holly Greenhalgh has a sure-fire set of recommendations for any home seller wondering what home improvements will increase the curb-appeal and salability of their house.
“New appliances, new paint, updated lighting fixtures, modern sinks, bathroom vanities,” she counted off on one hand. “You can resurface cabinets, if it’s good wood. Maybe there’s still that shag carpet in that one room that you need to get rid of.”
But ironically, the one Tucson home Greenhalgh is best known for selling is the one house in town that violates every one of those norms.
In June, the Coldwell Banker agent sold the locally infamous “Bottle House” in the Avra Valley area, a three-bedroom house built primarily out of thousands of discarded bottles from roadsides and the Marana dump.
In the mid-1960s, Tucson couple Theodore and Meletis Bryson began building a carport next to their mobile home out of mixed mortar and gathered bottles. As often happens in home improvement projects, it gradually escalated, and by 1968 the chiropractor and his wife had constructed a whole house from the unique materials.
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