Not long after Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford met virtually with reporters to dispel offseason rumors that he could be moving on from Detroit, his $6.5 million Michigan home landed on the market. Stafford’s wife, who had a hand in stoking the offseason rumors, quickly tried to shoot down the notion that the Stafford’s are preparing for a permanent exit from the area.
Nothing will change the perception that 2020 will be a boom-or-bust, up-or-out year for plenty of employees of the Lions franchise. And nothing will change the reality that the Stafford house is awesome.
Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press takes a closer look at the residence, with plenty of details about an extensive renovation conducted by the Staffords from June 2015 through May 2017. Builders gutted the old house and added 3,000 square feet.
It’s a very impressive structure, including one very unique feature (apart from the indoor basketball court with wood from the Pistons’ Silverdome floor): A 600-bottle wine room with a glass ceiling that looks up into the dining room.
Project manager Tim Birchmeier told Monarrez that the glass floor left some of Stafford’s larger teammates leery.
“He had a couple of the linemen over there and they didn’t want to sit at the dining room table,” Birchmeier said. “They didn’t want anything to do with that. . . . That glass is an inch and a quarter thick. But I was a little leery myself weighing close to 300 . . . the first couple times stepping on it myself.”
The article contains a lot more about the house, which at $6.5 million sounds like a bargain. For anyone who has $6.5 million to spend on a house. And who has no qualms about traipsing around on a glass floor.