This property would be an ideal family house with its twelve acres of beautifully landscaped grounds for privacy and play with its expansive lawns, tennis court, pool and 600 feet of shoreline with a deep water pier at La Trappe Creek for access to the Choptank River and the Chesapeake Bay. The Colonial style house steps down from the two and a half story main entry wing to the one story wing with a shallow porch leading to the secondary entry near the kitchen. The house’s exterior classic color palette of white shake siding, black accents of shutters and the main entry door stands out against its verdant background from ranging from shrubbery to mature trees of varying heights.
The main front door opens to a long foyer that once may have been a front porch but now the room is an elegant gallery with a powder room at one end. Wide cased openings at the rear wall of the foyer lead to the side by side spacious living and dining rooms of equal size with floors of mahogany. In the living room, dark brown leather club chairs, ottomans and a long sofa take their cue from the patterned rug to comprise a relaxing grouping around the wood burning fireplace. Another large rug with a more subtle patter anchors the dark wood table and Windsor chairs centered in the room between a side board and wide hutch for storage and display. The adjoining wall is set back from the rear wall for easy flow between the two rooms and the rear wall is detailed with a rhythm of a single window between pairs of French doors. The doors lead to the deep open veranda spanning the length of the main wing to become a true outdoor room overlooking the pool and the pastoral view of lawn, landscape and water with great outdoor-indoor flow for entertaining.
Two single doors on the side wall of the dining room lead to the kitchen at the front of the house and the waterside family room with the stairs to the second floor. The kitchen has an “L” and island layout with hardwood floors, white cabinets with period hardware, upper cabinets reaching to the underside of the ceiling with some glass fronted doors for transparency, pale green subway tiled backsplash and stainless steel appliances. The backsplash above the range is accented by a colorful tiled insert inspired by an advertisement for Wenatchie Apples. The kitchen is open to the family room whose interior architecture dramatically changes by the rear gable dormer above the pair of French doors and sidelights that flood the space with the warmth of the southern exposure. The secondary entry door leads to a short hall and to the game room and an en suite that could be an office or bedroom with its French door/sidelights to match the family room. The waterside shallow rear open porch at these rooms matches the front shallow porch at the front of the wing and would be a great space to sit in the shade and oversee children in the pool.
The stairs at the side of the room blend into a railing at the loft overlook at the second floor that becomes another gathering space. The stairs to the second floor and the loft separate one bedroom suite at one corner of the floor from the other bedrooms which makes it an ideal guest suite with its own private balcony off the gable dormer. The spacious screened porch is accessed by one bedroom and the primary suite at the opposite corner that spans the depth of the house. The hall bath serves both the waterside bedroom and the bedroom at the front of the house.
Most of all, I love how rear elevation’s combination of transparent spaces and the massing of the shed roofed screened porch and dormer windows reach out to the water with a mix of outdoor rooms including a second floor screened porch that spans the length of the main wing above the veranda and the balcony across one of the wide gable dormers at the secondary wing.
Twelve acres of privacy, waterfront on La Trappe Creek, tennis court and expansive lawns for outdoor play, outdoor rooms of porches on most of its front and rear walls including a screened porch that could become a sleeping porch on warm summer nights, gable dormers creating sunlit interiors, spacious living and dining rooms for entertaining and an open plan kitchen-family room-wonderful family house!
For more information about this property, contact Barb Watkins at Benson & Mangold Real Estate at 410-822-141 (o), 410-310-2021 (c) or [email protected]. For more photographing and pricing, visit www.EasternShoreHomes.com, “Equal Housing Opportunity”.
Photography by Janelle Stroup, j[email protected], 410-310-6838
(410) 310-2021
Spy House of the Week is an ongoing series that selects a different home each week. The Spy’s Habitat editor Jennifer Martella makes these selections based exclusively on her experience as a architect.
Jennifer Martella has pursued her dual careers in architecture and real estate since she moved to the Eastern Shore in 2004. Her award winning work has ranged from revitalization projects to a collaboration with the Maya Lin Studio for the Children’s Defense Fund’s corporate retreat in her home state of Tennessee.
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