Apache is functioning normally

The artist who bought a house in the Pittsburgh, PA, suburbs thought the place was boring. So he made some bold changes.

And he ended up with the Mirror House, which hit the market in April for $899,000. The reflective residence has already found a buyer and is listed as contingent.

The home’s radical transformation was a personal art project.

“It was an exceptionally ugly house, so it allowed us to take some chances and jazz it up,” says owner Martin Prekop, who has lived in the home since the early 1990s. The residence was built in 1969.

The result is thousands of 2-by-8-inch, mirrored tiles on the home’s exterior. Prekop cut them all by hand—from 12-inch, square, mirror tiles. He used double-sided tape and a bit of adhesive to affix them to the house.

“I press it on, and it tends to stay there,” he says. “Some of them have been up there for 28 years. In the spring, I have to replace some of them, because they pop off, but it’s not a big chore.”

Prekop was inspired to cover his house in mirrors, because he wanted to see a view of the nearby woods out of a bathroom window, but there was a wall in the way.

“So I put a group of mirrors up there to see what that would look like, and about 10 years later, I had covered the whole house in mirrors,” he says. “The more I put up, the better I liked it.”

Understandably, Prekop has experienced mixed reactions to having encased his 4,291-square-foot house in small mirrors.

“It depends on the neighbor,” he says, acknowledging, “This house definitely sticks out.”

Creating art is nothing new for Prekop, who is the former dean of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an acclaimed photographer, painter, and sculptor.

Prekop retired from the university in 2018. Now, he and wife Jesha are moving on from the installation-art-style house.

Inside the home, there are custom stair railings and 25 skylights, which usher in abundant natural light.

Prekop created many of the unusual elements in the three-bedroom, 3.5-bath home, including some of the furniture and cabinetry.

The kitchen is more of a commercial-style space; and the house, set on 1.5 acres, includes a home theater and music rooms. The dining area has mirrored walls and ceilings, and a large art studio opens via a garage-style door that offers plenty of light.

‘A living sculpture’

Prekop insists upkeep is pretty minimal on the exterior mirrors.

“It’s amazing how well they hold up, and they look clean and nice,” he says. “The rain just rinses them off, and overall, it looks sparkly and fresh.”

He says he and Jesha are moving closer to family and the timing is right.

“I feel like this project is finished,” Prekop explains. “I’m ready to do something else. I think of the house as a living sculpture.”

But he does have some opinions regarding what might happen next with the house.

“I don’t expect it to stay exactly the same; but the parts of it like the mirrored components inside the house, I’m hoping they’ll keep that,” he admits.

The listing agent is Linda Dibucci, with Piatt Sotheby’s International Realty.

Source: realtor.com