The Dream House at Last
Michael Temchine for The New York Times
Jim Abdo gutted the house that was on his property, which he bought eight years ago, and made it over into a weekend getaway.
Jim Abdo gutted the house that was on his property, which he bought eight years ago, and made it over into a weekend getaway.
AS Jim Abdo emerged from the 1907 bungalow he has transformed from its humble past into its current double life — period vernacular outside, completely modern inside — Vivaldi strings gushed from exterior speakers, filling the Virginia foothills with music.
“You’re about to experience 70 acres of my heaven,” said Mr. Abdo, a prominent Washington developer, restorer and revitalizer of down-at-the-heels buildings and neighborhoods.
To get away from his long and intense workdays, Mr. Abdo, along with his wife, Mai, and their two young children, retreat to the Ridge, which is what they call their country estate in Rappahannock County, about 75 miles southwest of their home in Washington.
The county has a mere 7,203 people, according to the 2006 Census estimate, fewer than before the Civil War; one incorporated town; and no traffic lights. Rappahannock owners, whether Republicans or Democrats, are united, Mr. Abdo says, in wanting to keep it that way, by strictly limiting growth. Further, there will be no condos marring the mountainside to the west, which is part of the Shenandoah National Park. Thus, the mountain view from Mr. Abdo’s property is preserved in perpetuity.
“I bought it because of the land,” he said.
Mrs. Abdo added: “It’s a peaceful place for me and Jim to go, to sort of reconnect as a couple and enjoy the outdoors together. There’s never an agenda when we’re out there, only to do as little as possible.”
The Abdos and guests take in a storm.
The view from the Abdo home, top, is fairly unrestricted. Mr. Abdo and Sophie, at right above, lead guests on a walk through the property.
Mr. Abdo had searched the county for a weekend place for 15 years and had previously bought the getaway home of the television news icon David Brinkley. But that house on 50 acres had no view to speak of, and it was Brinkley’s dream house, not Mr. Abdo’s.
Then, one day about eight years ago, the agent he had worked with, who knew he wanted something else, sent him a one-page fax about a property for sale. The fax said, “I think I found it.” Mr. Abdo called Mai, who was his girlfriend then, and they drove out to look it over. The first thing they saw, he recalled, was this “dumpy, little cottage” that was uninhabitable. The overgrown fields were the second.
Then they took in the view from the ridge. “Our jaws immediately dropped,” he said. “I signed a contract that day.” There was at least one surprise, though. As he read the fax, Mr. Abdo had thought the price was $875,000. He thought if he paid all cash, he could negotiate it down to perhaps $850,000. But he’d read it wrong. The asking price was $375,000. Without hesitation, Mr. Abdo became the property’s third owner since the 1700s.
The house and the land also presented Mr. Abdo with the opportunity to restore and revitalize another property, which is what he has spent most of his career doing.
Mr. Abdo, the Ohio-born son of a Palestinian immigrant, started a chain of pizza parlors in Hilton Head, S.C., was a radio reporter covering the Pentagon, then jumped into the housing business after he acquired a needy 19th-century town house in the now-fashionable neighborhood north of Dupont Circle.
Since then, Mr. Abdo’s efforts have helped revitalize neighborhoods that went up in flames after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. He has turned an old schoolhouse on Capitol Hill into high-end condos (including two two-level penthouse units he has held onto) and also converted the former Capital Children’s Museum, originally a convent built in 1840, into the Landmark Lofts at Senate Square, within site of the Capitol dome.
His own house in Washington is a 1920s mansion off Embassy Row. It once belonged to Col. Robert R. McCormick, a former publisher of The Chicago Tribune and briefly the owner of the old Washington Times-Herald. More recently, the house was an ambassador’s residence, which had fallen into serious disrepair.
Mr. Abdo changed that, turning it into the primary residence for him and his family. It sits near Rock Creek Park, and living there is almost like being in the country, but not quite. Jim and Mai Abdo married two years after he bought the country home.
“That was part of this bachelor courtship,” Mrs. Abdo said of the Rappahannock properties. “The fabulous pad in town, and the beautiful country place that showed the sensitive side of my husband.” When he owned the Brinkley place, she said, “we’d go out there, and he’d play the grand piano for me for hours at a time. “
Approving of his choice of the ridge property, she said, “was, second to marrying my husband, the best decision I ever made.”
There isn’t room for a grand piano in the smaller restored cottage, but Mr. Abdo’s love of music is somewhat fulfilled by the small satellite dish, inconspicuously perched atop a shed, that allows him to listen to classical favorites at any hour.
The cottage has two bedrooms and an open living-dining-kitchen arrangement. Mr. Abdo removed the attic ceiling to expose the wooden joists and create a large open space with skylights and a loft with a guest bed. Mr. Abdo also installed more windows to make the views more accessible.
The home is filled with antiques and knickknacks the couple have acquired shopping in the countryside. Mr. Abdo is particularly fond of distressed furniture, like a solid walnut kitchen table he bought at a junk shop. Similarly, in the small living room, an old mantel and fireplace replaced a propane gas furnace that heated the house.
Previous owners had enclosed the front and back porches to make more rooms. Mr. Abdo did away with the extra rooms to restore the porches to their original condition. “Jim is a no-frills type of guy — less is more to him,” said Mrs. Abdo, whom her husband described as a like-minded minimalist who abhors clutter.
On a Sunday in early spring, Mrs. Abdo was back in town taking the children, Sophie and Griffin, to the ballet as Mr. Abdo enthusiastically showed off his country retreat. Driving a golf cart, he crossed the windswept ridge where, he said, “the sun sets right in your lap,” and descended down a path he keeps mowed to the Covington River, which runs for 2,000 feet along the edge of his property.
He has also cleared a wide path along the riverbank and a hillside for his children to sled down. In warm months, he and his wife sit on deck chairs on the moss-covered rocks to read and watch their children splash in the shallow water.
Mr. Abdo delights in the remoteness of it all. “There is no Wal-Mart, no fast food, no McDonald’s,” he said. “I’ve had guests say let’s run out and grab this and grab that, but it’s a 40-minute drive. Some are put off by that. I love it.”
Also, at his Rappahannock getaway, there is no fax machine, no cellphone service and a land line that works but not always. “For at least 48 hours, we just check out completely,” he said. “I feel like I’ve had a vacation, and then I’m champing at the bit to get back to work in the city. My wife jokes I’m a man of extremes — the city and the country.”
Before they had children, Mrs. Abdo said: “We used to go out every weekend. Now, it’s maybe once a month. But that’s going to change. It’s not as complicated because the kids are older, and it’s less of a schlep.” The children, now 3 and 5, enjoy cruising around the property with their father in a motorized cart or on the big tractor Mr. Abdo uses to bush-hog the land.
“When you see this in the fall or spring, it takes your breath away,” he said. “You see colors you didn’t even know existed. You watch storms forming over the mountains. It’s like a box seat at the opera.”
But the Abdos aren’t through. Later this year, Mr. Abdo, ever the developer, hopes to break ground on a grand new house on the ridge. It will be much bigger than the bungalow, with more guest rooms.
In Mr. Abdo’s mind’s eye, it will incorporate local fieldstone and have one great room with a 12-foot ceiling, a huge fireplace in which a big fire will last the weekend, and picture-postcard views of the Shenandoah — as it is now and will always be.
