Home of the Week

Home of the Week: Mendon Craftsman on 6.5 acres awaits a budding gardener

The house comes with four bedrooms, three full baths, fruit trees, horse facilities, and modern features like radiant heat flooring.

By The Boston Globe

March 2, 2023

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Email

31 Washington St., Mendon

$1,099,900

Style Craftsman

Year built 1910

Square feet 3,420

Bedrooms 4

Baths 3 full

Sewer/water Private (Title 5 failed)

Taxes $10,679 (2023)

A riot of color. Mulberry trees. Blue, white, strawberry, and heritage white hydrangeas. Bosc and Bartlett pear trees. Red and orange azaleas. A Heritage apple tree. Red, pink, and striped pink hibiscus. Blue salvia.

Six and a half acres surround this 113-year-old Craftsman, an opportunity for the next owner to dive into growing vegetables, herbs, or more flowering perennials beyond those that now embrace the house’s foundation and front porch.

A scimitar-shaped driveway bends toward the entrance to this house, marked by five composite steps with lighting. They lead to a fantastic 50-foot-long, 11-foot-wide veranda that runs along the entire front and wraps around the right side of the home, ending in a door to a mudroom. The veranda affords a view of the gorgeous barn red vinyl plank overhead and the home’s cedar shake siding.

A pair of doors at the center of the veranda open into a foyer full of yesteryear brought current. Racing along the ceilings are broad exposed beams, while the flooring is ash that is original to the home but now boasts radiant heat (first floor only).

To the left is the 180-square-foot library. Here, a seat runs underneath three of the room’s four windows. Three floor-to-ceiling custom bookshelves create a niche for a desk.

Across the foyer, a pair of 9-foot-tall, solid wood doors original to the home open into the living room — at 375 square feet, one of the largest spaces in the house. Wood beams line the ceiling, and three windows look out to the veranda. The longest wall in the space, a whopping 19 feet, is split in two visually: The lower half is clad in brick that surrounds the wood-burning fireplace, while a thick wooden mantel introduces barn board laid out above in a chevron pattern. The room ends with a door to a mudroom with vinyl flooring and a doorway to the 254-square-foot kitchen.

The kitchen has been fully upgraded, but ties to its past remain: The rafters are antique walnut, and there is a wood-burning antique Crawford wood stove in front of a brick-faced firewall. The new stuff includes an island with a quartz countertop, seating for two, a cobalt blue six-burner propane gas stove, a sink, and solid maple, distressed cabinets.

A long quartz counter wraps around the exterior wall and features solid maple cabinets painted gray (some with glass fronts) and a farmer’s sink. The backsplash is marble, and the appliances are stainless steel. A 157-square-foot dining area is part of the pairing here.

A door off the dining area leads to a two-level composite deck that overlooks the largest chunk of the property, known as Whispering Belles Farm. A 14-stall horse barn and a separate four-stall horse barn are visible from the deck, along with a paddock, an indoor arena, and other equestrian outbuildings.

Back inside the home, a short hallway off the dining area ends in a sliding barn door to a full bath with porcelain tile flooring that is black with white veining, a single vanity with a granite counter, a shower with a ceramic tile surround, a tin ceiling treated to prevent rust, and bead-board wainscoting. A second sliding barn door reveals the laundry room.

The final room on this level is a 168-square-foot bedroom currently used as an office.

The second level contains the primary suite, a full bath, two secondary bedrooms, a game room (240 square feet), and a study (120 square feet). This level has central air.

The primary suite offers a 304-square-foot bedroom with a vaulted ceiling and exposed trusses, an 82-square-foot walk-in closet with shelving and a window, and a 108-square-foot bath. The bedroom is naturally bright, thanks to a glass slider to the Juliet balcony and windows above and to the side of it. The flooring is ash, and the walls boast horizontal wainscoting.

In the en-suite bathroom, that wainscoting is painted white. The bath features a single gray vanity topped with granite, a marble floor with radiant heat, and a shower with frameless glass walls, multiple showerheads, and a ceramic tile surround.

The final full bath is a journey into the past. The 103-square-foot space has a clawfoot tub/shower and a pull-chain toilet with a copper-lined wooden water tank, original to the home, in an otherwise updated room. Vertical wainscoting lines the lower half of the walls, there is a single gray vanity topped with granite, and the basket-weave marble flooring comes with radiant heat.

The other two bedrooms range from 112 to 144 square feet. The basement is unfinished.

Most of the property falls under the Chapter 61A tax classification for agricultural land.

Maureen Harmonay of Coldwell Banker Realty in Concord is the listing agent.

Follow John R. Ellement on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Send listings to [email protected]. Please note: We do not feature unfurnished homes and will not respond to submissions we won’t pursue. Subscribe to our newsletter at Boston.com/address-newsletter.