Your Next Place

By Franklin Schneider


This exhaustively renovated Logan Circle townhome presents a staid, traditional facade but inside it's as modern as they come. It still boasts many original details – the hardwood floors, for instance, were wisely retained – but check out the translucent glass wall partitioning off the staircase. It's the perfect balance of class and innovation, taste and hipness. Like Kim Kardashian except, you know, the complete opposite.

The all-white living room (iRoom?) features recessed lighting, high ceilings, and a gas fireplace, which is great. Don't get me wrong, there are few things more pleasant than a crackling wood fire, but every time I blow my nose after sitting by one the tissue looks like a coal miner's handkerchief. Can't be good for you. Right off the very fine kitchen (and completely separate from the formal dining area), the light-filled greenhouse-like breakfast atrium is one of my favorite spaces I've ever seen; if I had a place like this I would totally do more than just choke down a bowl of half-cooked oatmeal while standing up every morning. There are three roomy bedrooms, two up and one on the lower level, which is also where the family/media room is. I don't know why it seems so right to have the media room in the basement, but it just does. Maybe it's because you can blast the surround sound even at 3am without fear of disturbing your neighbors, or possibly I'm so deeply ashamed of my “Law and Order” addiction that it's more comforting to watch it underground, where passersby can't glance in the window and see my utterly shocked expression at the third act plot twist. (How do I still never see it coming?)

There's also a large garage and a rear courtyard that's straight out of the English countryside and wonderfully private. Located in Logan Circle, which – fact! - is doubling in hipness every 24 hours. You know it's the truth because I stuck that “fact!” interjection in there.

1514 Kingman Place NW
3 Bedrooms, 3 Baths
$1,349,000