Home Custom-Built for FamiliesAndover home offers comfort, community, easy access, views and room for family
Boyd and Cookie Rogers think their spacious Lexington home would be ideal for a young family with children. Boyd built the home for his young family in 1992, lived there for 28 years and raised his son in the family-style home.
“It was built as a home for a family,” he says. “And it needs to be in the hands of a family with children of all ages that can make full use of it and enjoy the unique community and neighborhood.”
The custom-built, two-story brick home is located at 1200 Sheffield Place in Andover Forest on Lexington’s east side. It has just under 5,200 square feet of space, with four bedrooms, two full baths and powder room, open kitchen with breakfast room, formal living room, formal dining area, master suite, multiple office areas, patio and deck, partially finished walkout basement, and ample space for expansion. There are many improvements and add-ons. And then there are the intangibles: peace and quiet, friendly neighbors, views of surrounding ponds, trees and green space, and plenty of room for the whole family to enjoy.
Andover is one of Lexington’s most desirable neighborhoods, with large comfortable homes, quiet shaded streets, and acres of private green space that includes 11 ponds and more than five miles of walking and biking paths that connect to Lexington’s Rails-To-Trails and Jacobsen Park. The Rogers home backs up to the third tee of the former Andover Golf Course, which closed a few years.
Boyd and Cookie, now looking to downsize, recently put their large home on the market. “We just don’t need need all this house anymore,” he said. “And single-floor living is going to be better for us.”
The home features a two-story-tall portico over the front entrance, which leads straight into the family area. The 18-foot-high ceiling over the foyer extends all the way to be the back of the house, giving a great feeling of space. The main features on the first floor include the huge eat-in kitchen which has beautiful Brazilian cherry hardwood floors (the foyer has oak hardwood flooring), granite countertops with marble backsplash, and a large island. A six-burner Wolf gas range with double ovens, and an under-counter microwave oven, make meal preparation easy.
The home has not one, but two sets of stairs to the second level. The main stairway is at the front of the home, the second leads from the upstairs hall down to the kitchen.
“That’s a family feature,” Boyd notes. “Everybody can get up in the morning, grab showers and get dressed, and come straight down to the kitchen to be together. It kind of fosters a family environment.”
Other key points of the first floor include the formal dining area and the great room-family room, which has dual ceiling fans and a beautiful wood-burning fireplace with gas starter.
“I’m an old country boy; I like a wood-burning fireplace,” said Boyd, who grew up in Bourbon County. “We use the great room as a den, TV-room and general gathering place. If we have people over to visit that’s generally where we end up if we’re not the in the kitchen.”
There is an office area on the first floor near the living room, although Boyd and Cookie actually use a large space in the basement as their home office.
Altogether there is 1,000 square feet of finished space in the basement, an improvement the Rogers made a few years ago. The basement includes an entertainment area, a sitting area, office area, a workshop and storage space. You can stroll out of the basement onto the home’s spacious patio.
The large deck, accessed from the kitchen-breakfast area, spans the length of the kitchen and laundry room and overlooks a small pond and a creek that flows past behind the house. A flagstone path connects the desk stairs to the basement patio. Both patio and deck offer pleasant places to sit, relax and enjoy the views and the outdoors, the Rogers say.
There is a half-bath on the first floor, plus two full baths upstairs, including the large master bathroom. Boyd notes, however, that there are roughed-in spaces for two additional bathrooms, one upstairs and another in the basement. Adding a bath on the lower level would make it easy to create a mother-in-law suite there, Boyd notes.
The home has a two-bay, attached garage. There is a lawn irrigation system outside to keep landscaping looking sharp, plus a built-in invisible pet fence to prevent dogs from straying.
A feature seldom seen today is the home’s traditional cedar closet, which Boyd built in the basement to protect woolen clothing during the summer months.
The Andover area offers easy access to many points around Lexington, including the Hamburg shopping area and two interstate highways. Bike travel also is easy.
Boyd says Andover is a community where “you still see families gathering in front yards, sitting in lawn chairs and having conversations, kids throwing a ball or playing in the green space. I’ll be out walking the dogs on a Saturday morning and see friends on their bikes with their kids, going to the Farmers’ Market.
“There’s a real sense of community you get living on this street. Neighbors are cautious about speed when they drive, they watch out for your pets, they watch out for each other. That sense of community is probably one of the things I will miss the most.”
Boyd admits to some sadness at the prospect of leaving a home “where so many memories and wonderful times in our lives have taken place.”
“Now lots of us are downsizing and selling these homes to a whole new set of families with their own children. It’s not only like it was, I think it’s really better when it comes to families. That’s one of the most attractive things about this neighborhood.”
This week’s feature home is listed with Brenda Ayotte of RE/MAX Elite Realty. To see more images of the home, visit the Homeseller gallery at Kentucky.com.
This story was originally published April 12, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Home Custom-Built for FamiliesAndover home offers comfort, community, easy access, views and room for family."