Get the popcorn, wine, frozen margaritas, whatever. It’s Friday, but you need to pull up a chair and see this house. Yours truly has been scurrying to find out where our darling Troy boy has moved, and let me tell you, I am SO IMPRESSED! Troy, Allie Beth, A PLUS PLUS PLUS!
First of all, a bit of background. This home was built in 2007/2008 by Mark Danuser of Tatum-Brown Custom Homes, who is, of course, one of my daltxrealestate-approved home builders. These are the folks who I would trust to build a home for Troy, my dear friends, and myself. STUNNING! 10,662 square feet with five bedrooms, five full and four half baths, seven living areas, three stories, a wine room on the first floor, no basement, no elevator, and a morning room with a fireplace! I love morning rooms, Troy. I’m coming over for coffee! There is a covered outdoor living area with an outdoor kitchen, a separate sitting area off the second floor master, a gameroom, a study, and “her” office. Oh, now, who would this be for, Troy? 
There is a media room with a very cool concessions bar counter, an exercise room, a 3-car garage, and fabulous landscaping, and it all sits on the corner of Normandy and Golf, so that lot is a roomy 75 by 192. That’s almost a third of an acre, but with much less maintenance than the Highland Drive residence. McCullough Middle School is right down the street. Interiors are all made of the highest quality limestone, hand-scraped wood floors, marble, and granite. If Mark Danuser puts it in, it’s solid, first-class, and has been around for 1,000 years.
Now interesting background on the house. Owned by a lovely St. Louis couple named Christine and George Tamke, I am told, and this is just scuttlebut, they bought the house as a Dallas pad for when they came to town to visit their grandkids; their daughter lives in Southlake. They were at the house fairly! But you can see how darling the bedrooms are, decked out for the grandbabies when they were there.
“They were there maybe 4 or 5 times total,” says one neighbor. “Very nice people.”
Mr. Tamke appears to be a senior operating partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Inc., which bills itself as one of the oldest private equity investment firms in the world. He has held all kinds of CEO-type positions at places ranging from Kinkos to The Culligan Company (“Hey Culligan Man!”) to Hertz. Mr. Tamke holds an M.S. in Management from Stanford University and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University.
The home has been on the market since April of 2011, listed with Joan Eleazer et al of Briggs Freeman Sothebys, and started at a high of $6,850,000. The price was lowered to $4.6, and Troy paid $4,250,000. Of course, there is a remodel underway—making the closets bigger, resurfacing, and I just cannot see Troy living with the leopard carpet on the stairs, can you? Nothing major, just some freshening up to make it more of a bachelor pad, perhaps, than a grandkid’s crib. Troy’s way too young for that. I have no doubt it will be stunning and teen-friendly. Troy’s interior designers are from Robert Trown & Associates.
Who bought Troy’s house? That, my dear readers, is a tale for another day!
