“Honey, I just found our dream home. It’s sitting on a private lot in the absolute “sweet spot” of the Grant Park neighborhood. It oozes charm, has three bedrooms and a garage that doubles as a workshop. There are even raised beds on the side of the house where we can have our vegetable garden. It’s only $575,000. Call me as soon as you get this. I love you."
Trying to buy just the right home in Grant Park is a challenge. Downright frustrating in many cases. Those reports of over a "thousand people a month" moving to Atlanta are true, and housing inventory is at an all-time low. Many buyers are left with the feeling they will have to snap up almost anything that pops up or be left behind. If you've had the discipline to wait for the ideal home to appear, your patience may be rewarded here.
Welcome home.
This classic 1920s Atlanta Craftsman Bungalow includes 3-bedrooms, 2-baths, about 1819 sqft square feet of living space and some enticing extras. For example, the detached garage which doubles as a workshop. No typical metal garage door, this one has those thick, wooden doors. The curb appeal is enhanced by several architectural details— large, decorative wood brackets support deep gable overhangs and the exposed rafter tails and tapered columns fully evoke Craftsman-style detailing. There’s a new roof, a transferable service contract for the HVAC, and the exterior was professionally painted last month - guaranteeing low maintenance for years to come.
The house is pushed way back and sits up off the street with an enormous American Holly, a towering Post Oak tree, pink and white dogwoods, azaleas, ferns, and hostas. This woodland garden creates an incredible sense of privacy, and the side driveway offers convenient off-street parking for easy loading/unloading. Go through a back door off the kitchen, and you see that it spills out to a quiet, flat backyard awaiting your finishing touches.
Lots of homes in the neighborhood have porches, but this one is special: a completely re-built, totally private outdoor living space with 37 custom screens uniquely styled for this bungalow. If you are in a position to afford this house, it may be due to all of your hard work. But there is a price to pay for working at a hectic pace. Do you find yourself, even on weekends and evenings, being reachable by cell phone, email and text messages? If you yearn for the idea of simplifying your life, then owning this home has the potential to offset that kind of blind ambition. You knock off early Friday afternoon, so you get to the house in time to take in a colorful sunset from the front porch. As the sun fades, the crimson horizon is replaced with a star-filled sky. You begin to notice the rhythm of a spring breeze rolling through trees as romantic music is wafting from the outdoor speakers. It's dinner time and right about now may be the perfect time to remind you of this home's other focal point -- the kitchen.
Chef's Kitchen w/ 6-burner range
IF you like to cook, you will give very high marks to this kitchen. Working with a designer who specialized in kitchen renovations and a 3rd generation carpenter from Ireland, the current owner went to great lengths to build a wonderful space for cooking, entertaining, and just "hanging out." As you might imagine, you’ll end up spending more time in this room than any other in the house. The palette of the tile backsplash matches perfectly with the swirling grain pattern of the oak cabinets.
Speaking of cabinetry, these were built on-site with every board of quarter-sawn oak hand-picked from a specialty woodshed to maintain the highest level of finish. You’ll notice the cabinets extend to the ceiling too; providing more than enough cabinet space. And that light over the sink — it's a restored, 1930s antique from an old barn in Georgia.
The kitchen itself is not only appealing to the eye--it will be appreciated by those of you who love to cook. All the appliances are high-end, and it does indeed have one of those restaurant-caliber stainless stoves — six burners, double oven and a breakfast griddle. "Yes" there are gleaming granite counters too, but do you know why chefs love this organic surface in the kitchen? They are very durable, elegant and you can use them to chop ingredients, cut fresh flowers or roll out dough for pizza or cookies. This is a true chef’s kitchen.
Custom-Built Bookshelves
When you look at the floorplan (here), you can see a number of important benefits woven into this well thought-out design. Two of the bedrooms are on opposite ends of the house. This maximizes privacy for a family, and it would do the same if you use the second bedroom for guests. The position of the master bedroom has a huge payoff. It is in the very back of the house, and when you walk in you get the sense it's pushed back into a private setting. You can go to sleep with the windows open and listen to the sound of wind weaving through the treetops and wake up to spring birds who live in and around the gardens.
It seems most people have a need for some kind of home office--typically this ends up being a makeshift space stuck in the corner of a living room, or it gets crammed into a bedroom. There is a solution here if you don’t have a need for a "3rd bedroom" --a designated workspace just off the formal living area. If you have a hint of Martha Stuart in you, and you yearn to organize things, you will love the custom-built bookshelves. It means you can comfortably have a computer, printer, receipts, tax returns, gift wrapping paper as well as a charging station for phones, an iPad, Kindle, camera, and scanner. Yea! Other extras in the interior include hardwoods floors throughout the common areas and bedrooms, plantation shutters (included with the sale) and a fresh coat of interior designer paint.
A tapestry of connections that surely makes this home an interesting chapter in Atlanta history. It was boyhood home of Manual Maloof, a prominent Atlanta politician and the original owner of Manual's Tavern, a popular Atlanta bar in Poncy-Highlands. When Manual came back from the war, his parents added one the back bedroom to the house so that he and his wife, Dolly Green, could live here. That room has since been rebuilt from the ground up and refashioned into a lovely master suite - there’s now a walk-in closet, and larger bathroom to accommodate modern living. And the room gets beautiful early morning sun from the east and looks out on the backyard.
Screened Outdoor Living Space
Dear reader, slow down for just a moment and think about the uses you can derive from the setting here. If you have one of those bone-crushing, stress-packed weeks at the office, you can begin the de-stressing when you get home on Friday. It all starts with two buttons--first is the one that turns off your cell phone, then the one that turns on you favorite music because this house is fully wired for stereo sound (including the outdoor living spaces). Now, open the front doors and windows, sit outside on the screened porch (which stretches from one outside end post to the other) with a glass of wine and practice meditative breathing. Later you can make a healthy dinner. Sleep in Saturday morning and have lunch al fresco on the deck. Feed the birds. Read a book. Take a nap. The back yard is ideal for a garden, and if a dog is part of your family, he will have a fenced yard to play in, and the scent trails left by all the various critters that live in the area will be his dog nip--he will be in heaven. Saturday night, you can invite friends over. Use some yard torches to light the backyard, and when everyone gets hungry, you can gather around the dining room table for more formal fare (the dining room comfortably seats 8).
There is an advantage you may not realize here unless you are thinking long term. The Grant Park neighborhood seems to get better by the day with an upward price trajectory that's one of the steepest in the City. No doubt a positive side-effect of Grant Park's wonderfully diverse mix of Southern hospitality and big city convenience. The people here genuinely care about one another and care about nurturing a meaningful community. Ask any longtime resident, and they’ll tell you how much they enjoy the convenience of the location: there are bike lanes to take you to the Beltline, a handful of great restaurants, coffee shops, bars, a growler shop and a brewery. New mixed-use developments sprouting up along the Memorial Drive corridor will bring a variety of dining, shopping and entertainment venues including a neighborhood food and wine market and great new restaurants like Taqueria del Sol and Ramen Station. Oh and let’s not forget that Grant Park has the best farmers market in the city! And just a few blocks from 378 Oakland Avenue, you have both Oakland Cemetery and the eponymous Grant Park - gorgeous parks literally “around the corner." To top it all off, you're walking distance to some other prominent Intown neighborhoods hot-spots like Cabbagetown, Old Fourth Ward, and Inman Park.
Here’s your chance to own a wonderfully warm home filled with beautiful sunlight through the banks of fantastic, large windows in the heart of close-in Grant Park - a house with the architectural details that come only with a near 100-year lifespan, but a modern design that embraces your contemporary lifestyle. Sure to impress the most sophisticated buyers, this home integrates old and new, with midcentury modern furniture, American antiques, and original lighting from the 1920s forward. It's unusually private, with extended outdoor living spaces overlooking an oasis of scenery.
And this vest-pocket section of Grant Park has no through traffic--ideal for taking a walk with your sweetie on pleasant evenings. You could not get a better design for your long-term use, or for entertaining family and friends. The friendly price is well under the recent average for a home of this caliber. What are you waiting for? If you're a ready-to-act buyer (or know someone who is), get to this home right way because prices in Grant Park are up the last 38 months in a row.
The seller is represented by Joshua Keen of "The Keen Team."
Call today for a private showing: 404-538-5356. Please, serious inquiries only.
