$850K ‘Fun House’ in suburban KC has a climbing wall, secret passage, Hogwarts room

It’s hardly common to have a house in the midst of cul-de-sac conformity where, over the years, the neighbor kids needed to get a safety waiver signed by a parent before playing inside.

But it’s also a fair bet that few homes in the United States, no less in suburban Kansas City, were built, at some 6,000 square feet, with a fire pole running 30 feet straight through holes in the hardwood from the top floor to the basement.

Not to mention the Narnia wardrobe which — when you duck and crawl, on hands and knees, past the vintage fur-collared overcoats — leads through a wall to, hey, why not?, a version of Harry Potter’s Gryffindor common room in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Is that the Elder Wand on a shelf? And is that lamp base in the shape of the three Deathly Hallows? Sure it is.

How could you miss them? They’re easy to see near the velvet couch and electric fireplace before you enter the adjacent Lego room, designed specifically with wall-to-ceiling plastic drawers to hold a collection that, before a bunch were put up for sale, plausibly reached hundreds of thousands of Legos.

Finally, don’t miss the garage. That’s where the 12-foot-tall, multi-colored “bouldering” or climbing wall was built during COVID lockdown. It has a tiny alcove at top fitted with fairy lights.

“My sister-in-law calls it the ‘Stabno Fun House,’” said Becca Stabno, the owner of the home with her husband, Andreas Stabno.

Their house took a minor star turn when it was featured in December on the local YouTube show “The American Dream,” which also aired locally on The CW. The show is hosted by Realtor and Lee’s Summit resident Jonathan Goforth.

Valued at more than $850,000, the house was built in 2016 in a cul-de-sac. Although parts seem conjured to fulfill the childhood longings of the Stabno children, Abbie, Emma and Sammie — now ages 22, 18 and 15 — the kids were hardly the driving force.

That credit goes to their dad.

“I think, I mean, it all was kind of Andreas’ brainchild,” Becca said. She and Andreas met on a blind date at Iowa’s Graceland University. He was a freshman, she, a sophomore.

“This was my idea,” Andreas said.

“It kind of spiraled out of control,” Becca said.

“You know, I don’t know,” Andreas said. “I mean, I can say that my mother pushed a lot of creativity when I was young and just encouraged us to express it in different ways. So I’ve always just appreciated thinking outside the box and doing things a little different.”

“A little different” is an understatement. Introverted by nature, Andreas goes against stereotype. An actuary by trade — a job not known for its thrills — he also is a runner, hiker and elite rock climber whose passion for the sport has prompted him to scale all but three of Colorado’s 58 “fourteeners,” mountain rising 14,000 feet or higher, more than two and half miles in the air.

Now that garage rock climbing wall makes sense.

Except, a year ago this month, that passion also landed him in perilous trouble.

He made headlines when, while scaling a face in Rocky Mountain National Park, he got stuck on a narrow ledge as it turned dark and cold, weather whipping at his body. Luckily, he took along a Garmin satellite device that his wife had forced him to reluctantly buy. He texted for help and waited six and a half hours before a helicopter rescued him.

“I never really thought that, at any moment, now I could fall and die,” he said. “But I just didn’t know what the future was going to hold. I was concerned about how long I would have to survive there.

“And I did end up making phone calls to my family that I thought could have been my last.”

But Andreas did make it back to his children and wife and the home the two of them, both raised in modest means, put together when the kids were younger. The house, in some ways, was a midlife compromise, Becca said. Whatever house they designed, she said, all she wanted was room for a baby grand piano, now the centerpiece of the first floor. A pianist since childhood, Becca is president of the Summit Theatre Group and has been performing in and directing musical theater for 25 years.

While the majority of the house is sophisticated, the whimsical idea to use its nooks and odd spaces to, for instance, turn the home’s tornado shelter into a Harry Potter room, was all Andreas.

“I don’t know what it is about it,” he said, “but I’ve always kind of liked secret passages.”

“He wanted us to have fun,” Becca said. “We wanted it to be that place that kids wanted to come to.” Albeit safely, which explains creating a waiver for parents to sign. Of course an insurance actuary would think of that.

“I just have this memory,” Becca said, “of all these kids ringing the doorbell, waving their signed papers in the air saying, ‘I can ride the pole now!’”

When Andreas looks around, he also thinks of the things he wanted, like a zip line in the basement, and a secret trap door in the patio (a hole has been cut for it) that never materialized.

And as for the Lego room: Andreas had been collecting since he was a child and, for years, ran a Lego business out of the basement of a previous house. Thousands of kits were being delivered weekly. With the children older now, no one is really playing with them.

“They want cars,” meaning real cars, Becca said. So the collection is now, gradually, being sold off. The Stabnos have also been thinking of the future and possibly selling and downsizing. It won’t be soon, Becca said, maybe in two years or so, once Sammie, their youngest, graduates high school.

“Trying to find the right family to move in here, I think, is going to be a little bit of a challenge,” Becca said.

Wherever they move, she said, the baby grand will go the new house. Not so much the fun stuff.

Andreas looked at his wife and smiled with mischief.

“We’ll see,” he said.