By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY — The two-story, single-family home at 21 Lagoon Road in the city’s popular Gardens section is just a pleasure to gaze upon — and gets better and better the more you look.
It’s like a Victorian Era piñata burst open, scattering eye candy everywhere.
Interesting details include banisters with a newel topped with a finial, gingerbread work, cresting atop a mansard roof, eave brackets and gables, as well as a cornice and supporting brackets above the garage doors. The home also features whimsical décor featuring mermaids and seashells throughout with a robin’s egg blue and white color scheme.
The house is so amazing that it would be easy to overlook its fantastic location. Set midway down one fin of the Whale’s Tail Lagoon, the home offers incredible views of the water from many vantage points, as well as providing a sheltered anchorage with access to Great Egg Harbor Bay. It’s a boater’s paradise, featuring a large floating dock with multiple slips and two personal watercraft berths. It’s also at the northern tip of Bay Avenue in an area with no through-traffic and very few visitors.
“This extraordinary home is prominently situated … with multiple boat slips, floating docks, spectacular grounds and every amenity you could want,” real estate agent Dorothy Phillips wrote in her description of the property.
Built in 2005 by Gabriel Building Group of Philadelphia, the home, “impeccably updated and maintained by the current owner,” offers more than 3,500 square feet of living space with five bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom.
“The kitchen, dining and living areas are banked with large windows that stream with sunlight and afford fabulous water views,” Phillips wrote. “Cathedral ceilings, hardwood flooring, a gas fireplace, exquisite trim and molding round out the interior.”
Three flowering trees in the front yard set the stage on a recent tour of the home, which has curb appeal aplenty. A paver sidewalk leads up to the covered front porch and continues around the right side, through a trellis, to the backyard, while a two-car-wide parking pad leads up to the two-car garage with separate doors.
“The grounds are beautifully landscaped with lovely rock work and mature garden areas with irrigation. The home affords unobstructed water views from every vantage point, incredible sunsets and exceptional luxury living,” Phillips added.
Atop the composite steps, featuring decorative seashells, is a covered front porch with a portico above. A door with a large glass insert and side panels, featuring a half-circle transom, opens onto the foyer with a view straight through the living room to the lagoon.
The ceiling above the handsome staircase to the right stretches up to the roofline, providing a space for the large mermaid-themed stained-glass window.
Medium-width hardwood flooring in this area is found throughout much of the house.
A few steps forward is the great room with a wood plank ceiling 14 feet above featuring recessed lighting and surround-sound speakers. A double sliding glass door and multiple windows along the back of the house, coupled with the mermaid window and its side panels, flood the area with light.
A white sectional sofa and an armchair are centered around the gas-log fireplace, which has a marble and carved-wood surround and mantel with a large-screen television above in case you get bored of the view of the lagoon. Overhead, two bamboo-leaf ceiling fans keep it cool even on the hottest days, while tall windows flanking the fireplace provide even more natural light. Sheer curtains and automatic blinds hang high above the sliding glass doors.
The kitchen is just a couple of steps away and features a large marble-topped center island with six stools. On one side are blue Mouser custom-made cabinets and a stainless-steel Viking Professional microwave. Two of the many chandeliers in the home hang above.
Against the back wall, with a view of the lagoon through three sets of double windows, white Mouser cabinets with a distressed finish are topped by a black granite countertop with a Shaws Original farm sink. A two-drawer KitchenAid dishwasher is just to the left.
The counter turns 45 degrees to the left where there is a stainless-steel six-burner Viking Professional range with a white subway tile backsplash and a pot-filler faucet. More blue cabinets are above and on both sides. To the left is a stainless-steel Sub-Zero refrigerator with bottom freezer drawer.
Just steps away is the dining area, featuring a long wood table with glass inserts and seating for eight beneath another ornate chandelier. A free-standing hutch provides more storage along one wall, while a pantry closet with double swinging doors is to the left.
A hallway leads past a half-bath on the left and stairs down to the garage on the right and up another set of stairs to the first of the five bedrooms.
This room, which is above the garage and overlooks the front, has a full-size bed as well as two sofas and a large armchair facing a wall-mounted television. A bank of windows protruding out over the parking pad includes cushioned window seats with an oval window at each end. The pink and white décor, suggesting a girl’s room, is repeated in the full bathroom, where there is a granite-topped vanity, clamshell sink and fully tiled shower with sliding glass doors. Overhead, gingerbread molding picks up the Victorian style of the exterior.
Back in the foyer, the grand staircase ascends past the mermaid window to the second-floor landing, which overlooks the foyer and offers a great view of the stained glass.
There are four more bedrooms on this level, the first of which is off a door on the right.
This bedroom features the same hardwood flooring as below. A pocket door on the left opens onto a walk-in closet, while a full bathroom with a long black granite countertop and fully tiled shower with sliding glass doors is on the other side. The sleeping chamber, now set up as a sitting room, includes a large mermaid painting above the sofa. A sliding glass door opens onto the rear deck, offering a bird’s-eye view of the lagoon.
Double pocket doors open into the master bedroom, which has a multiangled ceiling, built-in storage closet and a king-size bed flanked by tall windows. Another sliding glass door off this room opens onto the back deck.
Like the first bedroom, a pocket door opens onto a walk-in closet across from the bathroom. Unlike the first bedroom, this bath has a tile floor, granite-topped vanity with a clamshell sink, a claw-foot soaking tub and corner shower tiled to the ceiling with a swinging glass door.
Back in the hallway, a laundry room is across from the first bedroom and features a full-size Maytag Neptune washer and dryer.
Around the corner are two more bedrooms, each with a very neat faux-tray ceiling featuring décor space above.
One has a queen-size four-poster bed and a door that opens onto the portico above the front porch, and a bathroom with a granite-topped vanity, porcelain tub with subway tile walls and a swinging glass door.
The other, clearly a boy’s room, has bead board wainscoting and a bathroom with a red tiled floor, white vanity with a red granite top and a shower with red tiled walls.
Back out front, the paver path continues around the right to the backyard, where there is a large paver patio with an in-ground pool and a metal ramp leading down to the floating dock.
In addition to the pool, the patio includes a long bench along one side, a pergola, corner gas fireplace and a granite-topped bar. Other exterior features include HardieBacker cement siding and Azek trim.
The home is listed for $2.895 million with Dorothy Phillips of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Fox & Roach Realtors. Call (609) 335-1118 or (609) 398-9100, or email dorothy@dorothyandcompany.com, for more information or to set up an appointment to see this wonderful house. For more details, call the 24-hour pre-recorded hotline at (888) 210-0455, code 3511.
Phillips uses the 3D Matterport property presentation so potential buyers are able to virtually tour a home. Check it out at my.matterport.com/show/?m=gGkX1ocCdNa
