Last night, Judy Burbrink (above left) hosted her final guests as operator of the Villa Heidelberg bed and breakfast southwest of The Junction. Three years after first listing it, she has finally sold the stately century-old view home, with the help of Prudential Northwest Realty‘s Jeralee Knittel (above right).
(King County Archives photo)
But the new owners will not be operating it as a B&B; it will go back to its origins as a family home. Judy is moving into a condo that just doesn’t have enough room for everything she’s built up over 14 years of operating the B&B – considering, as she says, she moved in with 23 years of stuff from her previous home on Gatewood Hill – so a big three-day “estate sale” (“living estate sale,” Judy jokes, “since nobody died”) starts later this week. When we stopped by this afternoon, the packing and sale preparations were already under way, but we were invited to look around:
Furniture – including six bedrooms’ worth! – serving ware, even Christmas decorations will be on sale
Some items are already gone – Burbrink says some of the guests have snapped up certain items and traveled back home with them, so “little bits (of Villa Heidelberg) are all over the country.”
40 lawn chairs and even appliances and rugs are part of the sale, scheduled for 10 am-6 pm Thursday and Friday (May 30-31), then skipping a day and concluding noon-6 pm Sunday (June 2nd).
As a small sign out front notes, whatever you buy, you have to take away the same day. This closes 27 years of B&B operation on this site, according to Burbrink, who adds that it’s almost exactly 14 years since she took it over – her purchase closed on June 10th of 1999; she will be handing the house over on June 5th. “I’ll miss all the nice people,” she says wistfully. She was only the fifth owner of the home in its century-plus existence; it was built, as the history is told online, as a home for a family, which Judy says had eight kids, noting that the buyers have children too. P.S. If you plan to check out the sale, the house is at 4845 45th SW.
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