Category Archives: News & Reviews

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Hooray! After two weeks on the market, my mother’s Victorian in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights has sold. We listed at $1.4 Million and the home sold for $1.775 Million. There were seven bids. Our family is very happy to be almost done with the sale process and the new family seems very happy with their new house. Thanks to our broker, Charlene Delaney of Keller Williams, for her good work.

2125 Broderick was built by Harry Jay Summerhayes in 1878 for himself and his bride. The Compagnon family moved into the house in 1900. The Dickinson family started living there in 1963. At the end of this month, the fourth family to own 2125 Broderick in 134 years will take possession.

Image by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

One of the items we moved out of my mother’s house while clearing it for sale was her old moonshine still. Eleanor Dickinson was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountains. One of the cultural artifacts she brought home to San Francisco was an old still which lived in the garden for many years. It consists of a 3′ wide 15 gallon copper tank and a copper coil. There used to be a wooden barrel but that fell apart years ago. The still was originally owned by some mountain men near Elkmont whose grandfather provided “white lightening” liquor to my grandfather, R.E. Creekmore. My grandfather specialized in Criminal Law, including defending moonshiners, who paid in kind when they lacked the cash.

The 1958 song and movie Thunder Road was about running illegal moonshine along roads that included Kingston Pike, near where my grandparents lived in Knoxville.

Image by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

John and I went by the open house event today at my mother’s 1878 Victorian home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. There were some items to collect and we wanted to see how everything was going. Even though we got there just at the end, there were still two dozen people looking around. It is both exciting to have such interest in our family home and sad to see it go. The house looks so big without the furniture in it!

Address:

2125 Broderick Street (at Washington)
San Francisco

Realtor:

Charlene G Delaney
Keller Williams Benchmark Properties
415-786-7632
delaney@kw.com
http://www.charlenedelaney.com

Image by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright

One of the challenges of clearing my mother’s San Francisco house for sale has been disposing of the toxics.  Every household probably has some medicine, paint, cleaners, or household chemicals long past their useful life.  Disposing of these properly can be difficult.  When the home includes a professional artist, the problem is bigger because many art supplies are particularly toxic (toluene, lead, strychnine…). When the containers are glass or metal, these items are usually safe to handle but we did have a plastic bottle of furniture finish disintigrate when picked up, leaving my poor husband coated in stinking ancient tung oil.

We have been blessed with the energetic support of Marian, a long-time family friend, who took on the much-appreciated task of finding a safe and appropriate disposal site for each type of toxic we discovered.  Over the last two months, Marian has found a pharmacy that will take old medicine, a paint shop that will take partial cans of venerable latex paint, and even a San Francisco city site for collecting hazardous household waste. It is a big relief to get all of this nasty stuff safely out of the house. Thank you Marian!

Images by Katy Dickinson 2012 Copyright