“We love the water, and this house is such a fun place to live,” Nora Spradlin says of her home at the confluence of the Coan and Potomac rivers in Virginia. “We have fantastic views of the water from every room in the house (except one bath) because we’re at the end of a point.”
Nora and her husband, Tom, a retired air-conditioner distributor, purchased the five-bedroom, 5-1/2-bath home in Lottsburg on Virginia’s Northern Neck 12 years ago. Now they want to downsize, as their grown children and grandchildren no longer gather for frequent reunions. Their 2.38-acre property includes a 5,200-square-foot house, an attached extra-long one-car garage, a swimming pool and tennis court, 1,100 feet of waterfront, a dock with 6-foot depths at mean low tide and a boathouse with four slips and two lifts, and it’s on the market for $995,000.
At the end of a point and separated from neighbors, the rectangular brick house is laid out with most of the living areas upstairs, where the views extend northeastward across the mouth of the Potomac to Maryland, east across Chesapeake Bay and west up the Coan River.
In the 25-by-31-foot upstairs family room, a white tiled fireplace is tucked into one corner. Bookcases and a wet bar line the rear wall. The other three walls, all glass, include sliders opening to a balcony that extends the length and width of the house. The balcony terminates at an octagonal deck, a favorite spot for sunning or viewing.
A black marble-topped island with a Jenn-Air ceramic stove top forms one workstation in the L-shaped kitchen. Matching cabinets line one wall of the separate waterfront breakfast area. A grill stands on the deck adjacent to the kitchen.
Two bedrooms, each with a bath, overlook the Coan River.
Downstairs there is a second family room, and there are two guest bedrooms with sliders to the patio beneath the balcony. A third bedroom has a private bath, and the others connect to two full baths, which also are accessible from the family room. A small den, laundry/mud room, half-bath and garage complete the lower level.
The patio connects to a screened octagonal gazebo with a tile floor where the grandchildren love to play. Several stairways connect the patio and garage to the upper level.
The gazebo stands between the tennis court and the 35,000-gallon swimming pool, both on the Potomac shore, which is rip-rapped and protected by groins.
Their 200-foot private sandy beach, which has a brick barbecue grill, fronts on the protected Coan River shore near their dock. The covered boathouse contains four slips, two with lifts (10,000-pound and 8,000-pound capacity).
The brick and brick-veneer home has a multizone heat pump, an artisan well and a private septic system.
Although the Spradlins have always used the property as a family beach house, it is zoned for light industrial use. The annual taxes are about $5,000.
A range of shopping, dining and services abound in Virginia’s Northern Neck. Fredericksburg and Richmond, the state capital, are less than 70 miles away by highway.
Lisa Shultz (703-626-4868) of Long & Foster Realtors, Bay/River Office, Whitestone, Va., (www.beverlyshultz.com) lists the property.
June 2014 issue
