ON THE COVER: A front view of the Rehoboth house, which has triple skylights in the kitchen and 2.5 acres featuring a pool and pool house. Above, the spacious living room features a large stone fireplace.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

By the time Peter and Diana Cardi moved into their new digs, the first house to be built in a new development in Rehoboth in 1992, the town had changed the location of the road.

This caused the layout of the Cardis’ yard of more than 2 acres to include a long expanse that looked like a dog leg. (It was the space that was supposed to be used for the driveway.)

Peter believed the leg’s hilly terrain might make for a decent slope for sledding or even possibly skiing. “In the end,” he says, “it turned out to be a great place for walking dogs.”

The Cardis want to be closer to the water, and so they are selling for $899,000 what is essentially a gated-compound at 1 Abbey Lane. It features, in addition to a contemporary four-bedroom house, a gunite pool and pool house with a full bathroom, a kitchen and a two-car garage underneath. In addition, the enclosed grounds boast a park-like playground, gate and garage with automatic openers and an intercom system from the gate to the house.

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Walk through the House of the Week

The main dwelling boasts 5,875 square feet of living space, and comes equipped with an internal electronic dog-gating system. Diana Cardi says, “We had the electrical gating set so that the dogs couldn’t walk on the wood floors and scratch them.”

And, in the 1990s, the Cardis added a media room above the attached three-car garage. It has french doors leading to a balcony that overlooks the grounds, which are dotted with fieldstone walls built with rocks from the property.

The Cardi children use the room –– with plenty of storage space –– as a playroom. In addition to the wet bar, the Cardis put in a small carpeted pass-through under the eaves, which is accessed either through a mini-door or an opening under an arm of the built-in desk that pushes in and out depending on how much desk space one needs.

“Kids love to enter the closet and crawl through it and exit underneath the desk,” Peter Cardi says. “The first night we built this room, we came up here and couldn’t find the kids. They were in the closet”

The stairs to the carpeted media room lead to the house’s back entrance where there’s a coat closet, laundry room with folding table and entry into the kitchen. What’s striking in the over-sized kitchen is the copper backsplash and copper-covered hood over the Jenn-Air six-burner stove with a pull-out griddle. The embossed leaf design on the decorative copper adds additional brightness to the room, and the neighboring sun room, which is used as an eating area. Over the double sink are windows with a view of the yard.

In addition, the kitchen counters are covered with Corian; there’s a tumbled tile floor. The walls are adorned with bead-board and wainscoting. It has a large walk-in pantry with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a freezer.

A doorway leads from the kitchen to the dining-living room area, which has hardwood floors. The roomy dining area comfortably fits a table for 12 guests.

Also, on the main floor is a den with a striking fireplace made of fieldstone and pudding stone taken from the property. Barn-board paneling is on either side of the fireplace.

The room has a cedar closet; sliding-glass doors open to a patio; and large windows boast views of the grounds.

Diana Cardi says, “I call the den the grown-up room.” Off the den is an office/study with built-in cabinets, textured wallpaper and decorative square-panel molding below the chair rails.

“When we planned this house we were looking for space to raise a family,” Diana Cardi notes. “We built it to be for children, and we’ve had lots of Easter egg hunts, birthday parties and family here.”

The second floor features three bedrooms all with vaulted ceilings and two full bathrooms (a Jacuzzi and separate shower in the master bath). The master suite has access to attic storage.

In the basement, the Cardis put in an arts-and-crafts room with a Pergo floor, built-in cabinets and desk space. There are two oil tanks, an air-conditioning unit for the central air, a full-house generator (it turns on if the electricity goes out), water filtration system, separate well for in-ground sprinklers and alarm system.

The exterior has the feel of a farm house combined with some Queen Anne-style touches such as the one-story porch with spindle work, columns and decorative molding. The peak of the house’s gabled roof features gingerbread trim. Above the garage is a small tower with a copper roof and weathervane.

“We put in lots of windows,” says Diana Cardi. “We wanted the house to be very sunny and warm.”

In keeping with the theme of being a kid-friendly home, the Cardis added special decking around the pool so the deck stays at a comfortable-for-feet temperature. She adds, “We’ve had lots of kids here, and the good thing about the pool house is that you keep them in here and out of the main house.”

Diana Cardi notes that she planned the landscaping so that during each season something is blooming. “We have thousands of bulbs,” she notes. “As you can see there are window boxes all over the outside.”

The 5,875-square-feet of living space at 1 Abbey Lane, Rehoboth, has oil heat, central air, in-ground sprinklers and separate well, water filtration system, gunite pool, pool house, three-car and two-car attached garages, and whole-house generator (self-starting). It sits on 2.3 acres of land, and is being sold for $899,000. Taxes are $6,365. The listing agent is Kileen Mitchell of Century 21 T.R. Little Realtors, (401) 595-5056, kileen1@comcast.net or www.oneabbeylane.comHow to submit a House of the Week

A different House of the Week appears each Saturday in the projoHomes section of The Providence Journal. The feature tells the story of the house and the people who have lived in it. If you would like us to consider a house for sale as a subject of this news feature, send a photo, information about the house and why it is of interest, to Faye Zuckerman, real estate writer,

75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902; fax (401) 277-8250; or e-mail pjhomes@projo.com.

For more information,

call (401) 277-7333.

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