Home of the Week: Beautiful wood cabinets set tone for restoration of Dorchester Victorian
The home still has several original details, including the newel posts, oak entry door, pocket doors, and oak flooring.
6 Fairfax St., Dorchester
$879,900
Style: Victorian
Year built: 1885
Square feet: 3,625
Bedrooms: 5
Baths: 3 full
Sewer/water: Public
Taxes: $7,184 (2017)
The rectangles of Madrone burl wood inset in the kitchen cabinet doors of this renovated Dorchester Victorian tell the story of this home’s rebirth.
The cabinets, by British maker Mark Wilkinson and obtained through the Reuse Center at Boston Building Resources, now line a kitchen wall above a sink with a gold-plated faucet. The frames and main body of the cabinets are cherry, but each door has a stunning burl-wood insert.
The kitchen also has a prep island and a large high-end range with gold-plated trim set into its own shelved nook. Above the sink is a wooden plate holder, and the breakfast nook has a separate cabinet with clear-glass doors. The kitchen counters are travertine tile, a material matched with tumbled marble for the backsplash. French doors lead to a patio.
The attention to detail in the kitchen reflects the careful choices the owners made when they were updating the house, choices that also retained some of the home’s original details — crown molding, pocket doors, the oak entry door, and flooring — while introducing visually compatible changes. The original oak hardwood floor is paired with new fumed Siberian white oak in the kitchen, for example.
From the kitchen, a short hallway leads past a butler’s pantry and into a formal dining room with a tall ceiling and two sets of bay windows. The functioning fireplace features a carved-wood mantel with a tile surround.
Pocket doors connect to the living room, which houses the 12-foot-wide turret. This feature not only increases the available space in the comfortably sized room, it also bathes the area in light from three large windows. The room has a fireplace whose condition is not known.
Across the main entry is a family room (used as a home office) that connects to a sun porch. There is a full bath between the kitchen and family room.
To get to the second floor, you must ascend a wide stairwell with its original carved newel posts and spindles. The second level houses a full bath with a Carrara marble floor and claw-foot tub and four bedrooms, with the master enjoying the second level of the tower. The master has a small sitting area in the turret and walk-in closet. There is a working fireplace in one of the secondary bedrooms.
The fifth bedroom, on the third floor, is a suite unto itself. It has a full bath with a stone floor, a study, a sitting room, and a utility room with a sink.
The basement is unfinished except for the laundry room, and there is a detached one-car garage. The 0.24-acre lot is filled with perennials.
The listing broker is Roy Caley of Compass Real Estate in Boston. This property can be found at www.compass.com/agents/boston/roy-caley.
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 pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp.
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