The famous Grey Gardens home, in which Big and Little Edie Beale (relatives of Jackie Kennedy) lived, is receiving an extensive renovation.
The East Hampton home was purchased from Little Edie Beale in 1979 by Sally Quinn and her late husband Ben Bradlee. Quinn and Bradlee shared the home for 35 years. Following Bradlee's death, Quinn decided to sell the property. Quinn sold Grey Gardens for $15.5 million in November. Now, the new owners, who were not identified, are doing an extensive remodel of the home to restore it to its former glory:
The renovation calls for transforming a current crawl space into a fully finished basement, which will require lifting the house off its foundation, but Kevin Hummel [part of the team performing the remodel] said “nothing is changing with the aesthetics."
"The owners have been researching books and documents about the house for years," he noted. "They really want this house to go back to the way it was 100 years ago. They don’t even want it to look like a new paint job was done."
The Star reports that the building plans for the renovation indicate that radiant heat floors will be added to the bathrooms, kitchen, sun room, and master bedroom, and the finished basement will feature a wine room, exercise room, and recreation room. When it's finished, the renovated Grey Gardens is expected to include 33 rooms, with seven bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, and two half-bathrooms.
The new owners are also committed to restoring the house's namesake gardens, which became overgrown under the Beales. "They’ve hired a landscape architect to bring the garden back to what it originally looked like," Hummel said.
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