124 S. Mendenhall Street in Greensboro is proving to be a surprisingly tough house to sell. It’s a striking place, built in 1915. “Its walls and oversized gambrel roof clad in shingles, this house is a rare Greensboro example of the shingle style,” the neighborhood’s National Register nomination says.

Among its other distinctive features, the house has a remarkably wide front porch that wraps around on the right with French doors opening onto the foyer and another door at the end of the porch. Interior features include unpainted pocket doors in the living room, a long window seat along a triple window in the dining room and a kitchen island with a counter that seats five. I’ve been in the house a couple times (it’s around the corner from my house), and I can tell you it’s impressive.

It was listed last September at $850,000 ($273/square foot), which was pushing the upper end of the price range in the College Hill Historic District, though not wildly. It’s a big, beautiful house (3,100 square feet). With some give in the price, one would expect it to sell fairly readily. The price did come down substantially, to $695,000, and the owners accepted an offer. The house was under contract for an unusually long time before the deal fell through (four months, from March through June).

In July, the owners took the house off the market for three weeks, changed real-estate agents and relisted it this week with a significantly lower price, $615,000. What a difference those three weeks made. You rarely see a house made over so significantly after it already has been put up for sale. Perhaps the new agent felt that the sellers’ taste for dramatic colors and wallpapers wasn’t helping (and it did hit you the minute you walked in). That’s all gone now. Here are some before-and-after photos (click on the photos to see them larger):