A “A Christmas Story” home available for an overnight stay over Christmas – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Turn on the floor lamp, be sure to drink your Ovaltine, and try not to get your eye out as you spend Christmas at home in “A Christmas Story”.

The iconic home where Ralphie and the Parker family lived in the 1983 film – with yellow siding, green trim, and a floor lamp that shines through the middle of the front room window – offers overnight stays all year round and is currently available on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

For fans who want to have the next vacation home as badly as Ralphie wanted a Red Ryder BB Gun, the two-night Christmas minimum stay costs $ 3,995 per night. The house, located in Cleveland, Ohio but located in Indiana for the film, has nightly rates the rest of the year starting at $ 495 per night and can be booked at www.achristmasstoryhouse.com.

“What better way to spend your Christmas than reliving your favorite Christmas movie?” Said Brian Jones, owner and lifelong fan of “A Christmas Story”. “If you like the movie, you’ll love the house. Being a fan myself, I have worked to make things as they are from a fan’s perspective.

The house offers overnight guests a third floor loft comprising of a living room, bedroom and full bathroom and a kitchen with dining area on the second floor, all of which are inaccessible to those making daily public tours of the house. Overnight guests have full access to the public areas of the house from half an hour after tours end until half an hour before tours resume the next day. Six guests are allowed to stay overnight, and they can even sleep in Ralphie and Randy’s room.

Or cook up a meatloaf dinner, don a snowsuit you can’t give up or decode a message from Little Orphan Annie in the bathroom.

“When you see the house and walk in it feels like you’re coming home since you’ve seen it so many times in the movie,” Jones said. “It’s nostalgic.”

Recreate the house “A Christmas story”

The refurbishment of the house went much easier than the old man trying to put his broken floor lamp back on.

It was the Floor Lamp, along with the Navy and eBay, that played a role in restoring the house to its cinematic image in 2006.

Years earlier, Jones had attended the Naval Academy in hopes of becoming a jet pilot. Those dreams were dashed when he failed a vision test and was reassigned as an intelligence officer.

“It was good, but I was still disappointed,” Jones said. “So my parents made me and sent me a floor lamp as a kind of gag gift to cheer me up because it was a major reward in the movie. I asked ‘Where did you get this? thing? That’s cool. ‘ They said, ‘We didn’t understand. We had to do it. No one is selling them.’

So Jones decided to do it. He started his own business, making the career transition from a naval officer to an entrepreneur making floor lamps.

“I had an exit interview with my captain, he said to me, ‘What are you going to do?'” Said Jones. ” He did not understand. I was like, ‘I’m going to sell floor lamps, sir.’ He said, ‘Well, good luck with that.’ “

Jones produced them in his San Diego condo and sold around 500 floor lamps in his first year of operation.

When his wife Beverly, also in the Navy and heading to the Middle East at the time, sent Jones an eBay ad showing the “A Christmas Story” house listed with a starting price of $ 99,990, everything suddenly the ideal showcase to sell the leg lamps presented themselves.

“I went straight to MapQuest to see where Cleveland, Ohio was,” Jones said. “It took me maybe about 15 seconds to realize, ‘Yeah, I’m going to buy this. “”

Jones, who was 28 at the time, offered homeowners $ 150,000 for the house if they stopped the auction. They accepted. Jones acquired a large piece of Hollywood memorabilia on 0.12 acres at 3,159 11^e Street – known in the film as Cleveland Street.

“When I wrote my wife an email saying I bought it, she replied with a line saying, ‘I don’t know if I should laugh or cry,'” Jones said. “Basically I just spent all the money we had – it was going to be for a house for us in California – on a run down rental property.”

Jones, in the pre-Airbnb era, initially considered turning the house into a guest room. When he first visited and immediately felt the magic of the film, he was convinced to recreate the house inside and out.

Two years and $ 240,000 in renovations later, that’s exactly what he has done, giving the 80,000 fans who visit the house each year the opportunity to write their own Christmas story.

Expansion of the campus and the experience “The Christmas Story”

Bumpus dogs will not disrupt your stay or spoil your turkey dinner.

But Bumpus House, next to Parker House, most certainly stands and provides additional accommodation. Acquired in 2018, the house has been transformed into a pair of suites that can accommodate up to 14 people. This is one of the many neighboring houses that Jones bought to expand the “A Christmas Story” campus.

“It creates a whole house ‘Christmas story’ experience,” Jones said.

This includes the gift shop, which is located across the street and has everything from floor lamps in “flimsy” crates to Red Ryder BB pistols; and the museum, which is also across the street and features artifacts from the film like wardrobes carried by characters, Miss Shield’s classroom blackboard, and one of six BB pistols used by Ralphie in the movie Jones called the “Holy Grail” or the museum collection.

‘It’s like seeing the house you grew up in’

But the main draw is Ralphie’s house, where roughly 15% of the film was shot, including exterior scenes and a few interiors. This includes classic scenes like the shootout in Ralphie’s backyard with Black Bart (the original shed he’s still standing on), the delivery of the floor lamp crate, and mom and dad admiring the storm of snow through the living room window (the snow was actually instant potato flakes).

“It’s pretty funny how people get so emotional because they love the movie so much,” said Jones, now 45, living in Florida. “It’s like seeing a long lost parent or the house you grew up in because the movie was on all the time when they were kids.”

Inside, guests can don an Aunt Clara’s pink bunny costume, turn off the oven, or unwrap an official Red Ryder rifle, a 200-round air rifle with a compass in the butt and that thing that says the time.

Then go to the backyard and practice shooting at the very spot where Ralphie did it.

“Hey, it’s up to you,” Jones said. “If you’re staying at home and want to shoot a BB gun, go ahead.” Be careful. You’re going to tear your eye out.