Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider

The house next door to mine has been sold at least three times in the six years I've lived here. After a while I just assumed it was haunted, but after the last owners moved out I was able to go inside for a visit and I found that no, it just sort of sucked. It was narrow, dim, and had the finishes of a Holiday Inn rent-by-hour conference room. Of course everyone moved out after a year or two.

Conversely, the best houses are almost never on the market. (Much like the best women - I know because I've been checking their Facebook relationship statuses daily for years.) This sprawling 1914 house is a perfect example of this principle. It's been in the family for decades, and when you walk through it you can see why. High ceilings, wide open spaces, miles of burnished hardwood floors, four fireplaces, and six generous bedrooms, all spread over three levels. I'd stay here for decades too. (Unfortunately, the open house ended at 5pm.)

Coming in, you enter into a large, open reception hall area off which all the main rooms branch off, so the house is really made for socializing, parties, etc. The centrally-located dining room is fantastic, the kitchen is unbelievably roomy, I loved the large, elegant library (books are the new vinyl), the master bedroom is "suite" (ha ha! puns!), and if I lived there I'd totally call dibs on the sunny, quirkily shaped attic bedroom. Outside, there's a truly epic backyard and (if there was an emoticon for "intense jealousy," it would be right here) an in-ground pool - this place really is the "too good to be true" house that every family on television lives in, except that it's actually real.  And like the hot women on facebook, it was off the market before I even had a chance at it.

3846 Woodley Road NW
6 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths
Sale price: $1,623,000