I would be lying if I hadn’t ever thought about doing something like this myself…
If you have ever drove by a school and thought “that would be a really cool house,” a Pennsylvania couple beat you to it. What used to be Perry Elementary School in Mount Morris, Pennsylvania is now the home of Crystal and Rick Smith, or at least it was before it went up on the market.
The school closed down back in 2012, and in 2015, the Smiths bought the building and the surrounding property for $350,000. After buying the old school, the couple went through a painstaking renovation process to turn the former elementary school into their dream home.
When it came to the day of the auction, the Smiths were a little hesitant to go through with the purchase, but say that Mother Nature gave them the push that they need to go through with it.
Crystal said to Realtor.com:
“I walked outside and there was literally a rainbow over the top of the school, and he looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to buy that school.’ I looked up and said, ‘I can’t argue with that rainbow.'”
The Smiths moved into the conversion in December of 2018, and had been living in the impressive building which honored the old school while also including modern architecture up until they recently decided to sell it.
So if you are in the market for a home in Pennsylvania and have $2,375,000 dollars to spare, the schoolhouse boasting four bedrooms, more than four bathrooms, and many other amenities could be yours.
Both Rick and Crystal Smith attended Perry Elementary School, so eventually moving back into it was a surreal moment for the couple. They said that all of the school equipment was left inside the building when they bought it, and that they “could have had school the next day” if they really wanted to.
Most of the house is remodeled and repurposed, but a couple of the rooms look a lot like how they did when the school was in its glory days. The gymnasium with basketball goals is mainly the same, along with the cafeteria where student used to file through with their plastic trays for their mid-day meal. Smith also says:
“We left the boys’ and girls’ restrooms. We remodeled them, but we left them as original as could be.
With bathroom stalls, the whole school theme is still going on.”
As you’ll see in some of the photos below, the Smiths did a great job of changing up the property, but still leaving some of the endearing parts of the school in tact. They even left a classroom, an office, and the nurse’s room as is (Crystal is a nurse).
And now the couple has decided to live out another life long dream by buying a house on the lake, so the Smiths are saying good bye to their converted school home and hoping that another buyer will appreciate it as much as they have. Check out some of the pictures below and see if the property might be right for you:
This TikTok does a pretty good job of describing the whole story as well:
@zillowtastrophes Back to school! 🏫 #schoolhouse #zillowtastrophe #forsale #backtoschool #weirdhouse #zillow #pennsylvania #strangehouse #schoollife #morgantown #wv ♬ Graduation Song – The Hit Crew
