April 23, 2004
New Listings
For some time now I’ve been meaning to describe Lenox Drive (behind Whole Foods) as the best in-town street on which nothing was for sale. Margarita Krackow, of Country Living Associate has forced me to revise that plan by listing #8-10 Lenox and I’m glad she has. This is a wonderful old house built in 1913 with high, high ceilings, three full stories and a walk-out basement, and an absolutely perfect location if you to prefer to walk to Greenwich Avenue. It is presently set up as a multi-family residence but it would be no effort at all to use this house for what I think is its best use: a gracious single family residence. General Phil Sheridan once said that if he owned Texas and Hell, he’d rent out Texas and live in Hell. I’m not equating our Back Country with Texas, mind you, but if someone out there were tired of trying to maintain fifteen thousand square feet of a builder’s bad taste and a four acre yard, this would be a great alternative.
Another very, very nice house that’s new to the market is Jan Milligan’s listing in Pemberwick at 11 Green Lane, a quiet dead end just above the Byram River. It’s a completely renovated cottage with an excellent kitchen, master bedroom and so forth. By no means huge, it would be a great starter home. Very smartly priced, I think, at $699,000. Another house I really liked was Ward Davol’s listing at 101 Londonderry Drive (off Stanwich). An unprepossessing house at first glance, the more I saw of it the more it grew on me. It’s a 1966 Peter Ogden contemporary, with six bedrooms, five fireplaces and tons of light and great views from every room (those views are of Burning Tree’s golf course, so as long as people play golf, the views should be safe). Huge amounts of space (5,804 sq.ft.) including a finished office/guestbedroom suite, with fireplace, in the walk-out basement and an approach via a courtyard with a fountain, pool and goldfish (if this were further out in the country, Ward would no doubt describe the pool as “a trout pond” but he showed real restraint here). An excellent house.
Old Greenwich
Continues to be hot. 39 Arcadia Road, across from the Post Office, came on the market at $985,000 and was snapped up instantly. This was a 1909 house that needed work but the location is handy to everything and I wasn’t surprised to see it go so quickly. The recently renovated 1926 house at 3 Fairgreen Lane (Shorelands) came on priced at $1,850,000 and I am certain (but don’t actually know) that it went via bidding war for far more than that over the weekend. This was a very nice house as is, although it could be expanded, and had great water views. Nothing not to like.
Bamboozled!
I had not heard of using bamboo as a substitute for hardwood flooring until Tuesday, when an open house listing (for an excellent house on Locust Street) touted its virtues. I came, I saw, I admired, and then noticed the same material in two more houses the same day. Three such occurrences make a trend, I suppose, so I Googled the stuff to find out more. Turns out, bamboo is very hard-about as hard as maple, for instance, and more stable (doesn’t absorb atmospheric humidity) than red oak. The flooring product is made, surprise! in China so you’d think that it should be as cheap as chopsticks, but it’s not: best I can discern, it’s comparable in cost to hardwood, although, because it’s a laminated product and comes pre-finished, it is simpler to install and can be laid directly over concrete. What its manufacturers (and a number of Berkley-type eco organizations) tout are the environmental advantages of substituting bamboo for, say oak. Bamboo regenerates in five years versus one hundred years for oak, it is easily harvested without trashing the countryside, and there’s a lot more of it than there is bongabonga rainforest wood. It can be finished in any color and, again according to various websites, has been successfully used in all sorts of high end residences, retail stores and corporate headquarters. So if that college kid of yours is kvetching about your fifteen thousand square foot mansion plans constituting a heinous rape of the land, placate her by specifying bamboo floors. She’ll be so much more comfortable and her poolside summers won’t be ruined by a guilty conscience.
For some time now I’ve been meaning to describe Lenox Drive (behind Whole Foods) as the best in-town street on which nothing was for sale. Margarita Krackow, of Country Living Associate has forced me to revise that plan by listing #8-10 Lenox and I’m glad she has. This is a wonderful old house built in 1913 with high, high ceilings, three full stories and a walk-out basement, and an absolutely perfect location if you to prefer to walk to Greenwich Avenue. It is presently set up as a multi-family residence but it would be no effort at all to use this house for what I think is its best use: a gracious single family residence. General Phil Sheridan once said that if he owned Texas and Hell, he’d rent out Texas and live in Hell. I’m not equating our Back Country with Texas, mind you, but if someone out there were tired of trying to maintain fifteen thousand square feet of a builder’s bad taste and a four acre yard, this would be a great alternative.
Another very, very nice house that’s new to the market is Jan Milligan’s listing in Pemberwick at 11 Green Lane, a quiet dead end just above the Byram River. It’s a completely renovated cottage with an excellent kitchen, master bedroom and so forth. By no means huge, it would be a great starter home. Very smartly priced, I think, at $699,000. Another house I really liked was Ward Davol’s listing at 101 Londonderry Drive (off Stanwich). An unprepossessing house at first glance, the more I saw of it the more it grew on me. It’s a 1966 Peter Ogden contemporary, with six bedrooms, five fireplaces and tons of light and great views from every room (those views are of Burning Tree’s golf course, so as long as people play golf, the views should be safe). Huge amounts of space (5,804 sq.ft.) including a finished office/guestbedroom suite, with fireplace, in the walk-out basement and an approach via a courtyard with a fountain, pool and goldfish (if this were further out in the country, Ward would no doubt describe the pool as “a trout pond” but he showed real restraint here). An excellent house.
Old Greenwich
Continues to be hot. 39 Arcadia Road, across from the Post Office, came on the market at $985,000 and was snapped up instantly. This was a 1909 house that needed work but the location is handy to everything and I wasn’t surprised to see it go so quickly. The recently renovated 1926 house at 3 Fairgreen Lane (Shorelands) came on priced at $1,850,000 and I am certain (but don’t actually know) that it went via bidding war for far more than that over the weekend. This was a very nice house as is, although it could be expanded, and had great water views. Nothing not to like.
Bamboozled!
I had not heard of using bamboo as a substitute for hardwood flooring until Tuesday, when an open house listing (for an excellent house on Locust Street) touted its virtues. I came, I saw, I admired, and then noticed the same material in two more houses the same day. Three such occurrences make a trend, I suppose, so I Googled the stuff to find out more. Turns out, bamboo is very hard-about as hard as maple, for instance, and more stable (doesn’t absorb atmospheric humidity) than red oak. The flooring product is made, surprise! in China so you’d think that it should be as cheap as chopsticks, but it’s not: best I can discern, it’s comparable in cost to hardwood, although, because it’s a laminated product and comes pre-finished, it is simpler to install and can be laid directly over concrete. What its manufacturers (and a number of Berkley-type eco organizations) tout are the environmental advantages of substituting bamboo for, say oak. Bamboo regenerates in five years versus one hundred years for oak, it is easily harvested without trashing the countryside, and there’s a lot more of it than there is bongabonga rainforest wood. It can be finished in any color and, again according to various websites, has been successfully used in all sorts of high end residences, retail stores and corporate headquarters. So if that college kid of yours is kvetching about your fifteen thousand square foot mansion plans constituting a heinous rape of the land, placate her by specifying bamboo floors. She’ll be so much more comfortable and her poolside summers won’t be ruined by a guilty conscience.
posted by Chris Fountain at 9:59 AM
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