No ordinary guesthouse

In spite of being well worn and empty for at least five years, 616 Eaton St.'s presence in Old Town is immense -- even at the peak of the Recession in 2009 it was for sale for more than $5 million. Some serious reductions in pricing and a couple of turnovers later, the property's future as a guesthouse is really big, too.

Of course, the stately old mansion set well behind a newly constructed wrought-iron fence will be no ordinary commercial guesthouse; it's in the early throes of becoming the private guesthouse for a new single-family estate.

"We have a collection of houses from Key West to Marathon that we've built from scratch, or renovated. We're selling them to go big at this location," said Kristina Serbinski, who bought last year with her husband Mark what was then a 2,427-square-foot, two-family structure. "We're still working out plans for the property's development."

Already, some permits have been issued, and Key West's Historic Architectural Review Commission has breathed a big sigh of relief because most of the add-ons are being removed. The redesigned two-story guesthouse will have two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. Downstairs, the two bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms will flow smoothly into and beneath the 14-foot-high ceilings of the living-dining and kitchen's open-floor plan.

But the renovation project is immense: Exploratory work from the ground up includes engineers, local architect Bill Horn, a contractor and builders.

Serbinski said the couple could "band-aid and make do" for 10 or so years, but instead they chose the high road to careful renovation because they want to return the historic house to its heyday from around the turn of the 20th century and, equally important, they want to create a private estate worthy of entertaining lots of friends and family members.

"The siding is holding up the balloon frame, which is in good shape," said Mitch Sammis of Infinity Builders. He was in charge of other Serbinski renovation projects and is overseeing everything here to shore up sagging floor joists, to install new footings and sills, to build a new interior staircase and salvage as much Dade County pine as possible.

"The floor is layer upon layer," Serbinski said. "We just can't save it all."

The big pile of rotten wood discarded in the soon-to-be-torn down dining-room addition at the back of the house goes away, and with it a bathroom addition on the west side.

Here, a new driveway will separate guesthouse and property line, ultimately leading to the new garage and new five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house. This is the primary residence being built behind the historic guesthouse, but connected to it by a skywalk from the garage.

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No ordinary guesthouse