Luxury home: Award-winning elegance on 5 Great Falls acres

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By Michele Lerner

For three years, the owners of the home at 1201 Towlston Road in Great Falls worked with architects and builders to renovate their residence with a blend of New England elegance and graceful Southern living, all the while incorporating green building practices and features.

The result earned this home the 2008 National Association of Home Builders' Chrysalis award for a Whole Home Renovation for a home over $500,000 in the Northeast region.

Now on the market for $5,900,000, this Great Falls home is on 5 acres of rolling Northern Virginia land with a private drive. The main residence, with more than 9,000 square feet, includes six or seven bedrooms, four full baths, three powder rooms, six fireplaces and a three-car garage.

The guesthouse, designed in the style of an old-fashioned carriage house, provides an intimate setting for dinner parties, overnight guests or a studio or writer's retreat. It has a covered front porch, an open living and dining area, a center-island kitchen, laundry room, bedroom, full bath, powder room, loft and a wood-burning fireplace.

The owners included vintage-wood beams and floors, a stone fireplace, hand-forged wrought-iron hardware and custom-made gas lanterns to evoke a historical ambience in the guesthouse. The kitchen features antique pine cabinetry, a farmhouse sink, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, a Viking range, Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer and honed Carrera marble counters. The full bath has a marble floor, bead-board walls, a claw-foot tub and an antique pine chest converted to a wash stand.

In addition to the guest-house, the grounds of this Great Falls estate include professional landscaping with boxwoods, roses, hydrangeas and crape myrtles.

More than 20 copper lanterns from New Orleans add elegant night lighting to the home, and the pea-gravel drive includes a parking circle for guests and extends into additional paths and parking areas.

The main residence has a lower-level terrace; a screened porch and several patios on the main level; an upper-level balcony, and a rooftop terrace. Inside, architectural interest is added with reclaimed vintage lumber, bead-board walls, handmade crown moldings and coffered ceilings.

The formal living room features columns and a wood-burning fireplace, while the formal dining room also includes columns and French doors that open into a sunroom with slate flooring and walls of windows framing views of the formal gardens.

The main level also includes a library with custom-designed cherry cabinets and walls, with an adjacent wet bar with cherry cabinets and handmade tiles. The nearby family room has a coffered ceiling, a stone fireplace and multiple French doors to the veranda and screened porch, along with built-in bookshelves. The screened porch includes an outdoor brick fireplace.

The center-island kitchen has state-of-the-art appliances, including a glass-front Sub-Zero refrigerator with freezer drawers, a Wolf range, two dishwashers, warming drawers, custom-made cabinets, bead-board ceiling and granite and marble counters. The adjacent breakfast room has windows on two sides. A mudroom with slate flooring, storage cubbies and a built-in desk opens onto a covered walkway to the garage.

Upstairs, the master suite has French doors to a wraparound balcony, a gas fireplace, custom-designed paneling and cabinets, a breakfast bar, separate sitting room with built-in bookshelves, a dressing room and two walk-in closets. The master bath features marble mosaic tile flooring, handmade wall tiles, a soaking tub, two marble sinks and a shower.

Four additional bedrooms are on the upper level, along with two more full baths. One of these bedrooms has access to the roof terrace.

The finished lower level includes more space for entertaining: a billiards room with vintage whiskey-barrel flooring, pub-style bar, French doors to a terrace and a 100-year-old bar back with lions reclaimed from a bar in Baltimore. This level also includes a recreation room with a fireplace, a fully equipped media room and an exercise room with a full bath and French doors to a lawn area that could be the site for a pool. The wine cellar has terrazzo flooring and a separate climate-control system; it holds 1,264 bottles. This level also has a mudroom and storage rooms, plus a powder room. The home has a built-in stereo system and alarm system.

For more information about this home or to schedule an appointment, call Realtor Michelle Pappas with McEnearney Associates, 703/622-2282 or visit www.michelle pappas.com.