Learning from home will take on a whole new meaning for whoever ends up buying this home that was converted from a former elementary school.
The house, which was listed in Mount Morris, Pennsylvania, for $2.375 million, was once the site of Perry Elementary School. As first reported by realtor.com, husband and wife Crystal and Rick Smith bought the property at auction for less than $350,000 in 2015 and undertook a major renovation project to make it into a home.
“They took two classrooms and made an arcade room,” listing agent Keith Herrington, who alongside Rick was once a student at the elementary school, told realtor.com. “They took classrooms and made bedrooms and put bathrooms in.”
The school was built in 1965 but closed due to low attendance in the rural community. But as an entire school, it’s a large property — 11 acres of land and a 14,716-square-foot building. The Smiths turned what was once the cafeteria into a spacious and modern dining room, and the former gym is now an indoor basketball court.
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The Smiths replaced the tiling and turned the classrooms into bedrooms, but they also chose to keep the school feel through many of the original features. These include a nurse’s office (coincidentally, Crystal Smith works as a nurse), an office and one of the classrooms.
“We left the boys’ and girls’ restrooms,” Crystal Smith told realtor.com. “We remodeled them, but we left them as original as could be. With bathroom stalls, the whole school theme is still going on.”
The home holds a lot of emotional and nostalgic connection for the Smiths — many of the former students and teachers had been stopping by to see the renovation. That said, they made the choice to move away from the area and are now trying to find a buyer who will appreciate the schoolhouse-turned-real-house as much as they have.
“We thought about his pretty long and hard,” Crystal Smith said. “I’m still a little hard-pressed to believe we’re moving, but we are.”