Bungalow for sale with organ

Bill Tufts loved big pipe organs - enough to nearly double the size of his bungalow to make room for a 3,200-pipe church organ. Now, after his death, friends who installed the massive church organ in his home are hoping to find another music lover who will preserve the 32-rank Kimball church organ that defines the house in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Though he never learned to play, Tufts enjoyed bringing in musicians who did. He loved how the instrument, from its tiny bells and whistles to its throaty 18-foot bass pipes, could fill the house with sound.



“We really would like somebody to buy it who likes the organ and appreciates it for what it is,” said Don Haan, owner of Haan Pipe Organ. He and his partner, Guy Vander Wagen, have listed the house for $129,900 with Realtor Mark Douglas. Tufts, who had no surviving family members, bequeathed the house to Haan and Vander Wagen, when he died earlier this year at age 72. “He was alone in the world. That organ was his wife and family,”



Tufts bought the instrument in 2002 from Central Reformed Church in Muskegon, which could no longer afford to maintain it, Haan said. “The whole project took at least 5 ½ years,” he said. While the organ console holds a modest place of honour in the home’s dining room, its muscle comes from a giant turbine installed in the old coal bin of the 139-year-old house. The house-filling sound comes from a two-room addition that’s been dug down one level to house the 3,200 pipes that range from drill-bit sized whistles to giant wooden crate-like pipes that reach to the top of the cathedral ceiling.


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“It’s probably twice the size of what the average church around town has,” says Haan. Technically, the organ is four separate instruments joined at the big console, he said. The sound flows into the living room from the pipe chambers through foot-controlled “expression shades” that were once the home’s exterior windows. Aside from its size, the organ is an irreplaceable treasure that would cost close to $1 million to duplicate today, Haan said. A re-installation would cost more than $100,000. “The Kimball Organ Co. is long gone and the guys who voiced those pipes are long gone, too.” Haan said he and Vander Wagen would be saddened to see the organ leave the house after all the years they spent on the installation. “We want to find someone who loves it as much as he did,” he said of their late friend. “He really did love it.”