As the old folk song goes, there are 99 bottles of beer on the wall … but in one Florida condo, there are likely tens of thousands of beers on the wall.
Guests are greeted with rows upon rows of Budweiser cans when stepping through the door to unit 102 at 4707 Lucerne Lakes Blvd East in Lake Worth, Florida, approximately 15 miles south of West Palm Beach.
“I was just blown away. I really didn't know what to think,” real estate agent Kristen Adams-Kearney told TODAY Home of her first visit to the two-bedroom, two-bathroom condominium. “It's just such a unique place.”
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Adams-Kearney, who owns the brokerage Kearney & Associates Realty and listed the condo, has been in real estate for 15 years but had never before encountered such an unexpected home.
“We've seen some things in our days because we've been through the short sale market and the foreclosure market but nothing like this,” she said.
The 815-square-foot condo is adorned with Bud cans from floor to ceiling in nearly every room, except for the two bathrooms.
Adams-Kearney first learned of the property when she received a phone call from Kris Johnson, who had become the representative for the estate of a friend who had died in June.
“He first asked me if I'd be interested in taking a listing that was wallpapered with beer-can wallpaper, and up until the appointment, I couldn't imagine where you would even find beer-can wallpaper,” Adams-Kearney explained. “I didn't know until I walked in that it was actually wallpapered with beer cans.”
Despite its unique lager-themed feature, Adams-Kearney wasn’t immediately sold on taking the listing. But when Johnson shared in detail the story of his late friend, named Mike Amelotte, she went for it.
“Traditionally, it's not something we would normally go after, but we wanted to honor his legacy.”
Johnson wrote Adams-Kearney a letter and revealed that Amelotte, who died at age 69, was a U.S. Navy veteran and former decoder during the Cuban missile crisis. In later years, Amelotte ran his own pool service and also worked at a Red Lobster and at Palm Beach National Golf & Country Club.
“Mike moved into his condo in 1986 and started saving Bud cans,” Johnson wrote of Amelotte in his letter. “He had a stack of Bud cans on his dining room table stacked high to the ceiling. Every can in his condo was drank in his condo.”
Amelotte stuck to what he liked. Johnson wrote that he drank only Bud for more than four decades — and “not Bud Light but Bud.”
Johnson explained in his letter that his friend started the beer-can project around 1990 and took 16 years to complete it. “That makes it around 2006,” he wrote. “Mike did this by himself.”
Adams-Kearney believes Amelotte likely hot-glued Budweiser beer cans of various sizes to every inch of the walls and ceilings. “He even went as far as to create crown molding and took attention to detail around outlets and A.C. vents in return,” she said.
In August, Adams-Kearney listed the apartment for $110,000 and lowered the price to $100,000 in September. She has received multiple offers on the condo since, and the property is now under contract. The potential new owners did not see the apartment in person before putting in an offer, and their inspection is scheduled for Thursday.