1972 Little Long Lake Road - $1,995,000
The Essentials
A custom-built log home finished on four levels, with geothermal heating, a salt-water pool, film screening room, forty foot ceilings, over 500 feet of waterfront, almost three acres …
AND … THIS IS ANOTHER CO-LISTING WITH ERIN GALLAGHER AT CENTURY 21. Which means you get two perspectives, and twice the attention if you need us.
The Bigger Picture
I have a persistent image in my head of world leaders congregating beneath the towering trees on Little Long Lake Road, around the saltwater pool with their oh-so-white knees, hammering out far-reaching policy at the scarlet snooker table, maple cues held like spears, snorting steeds lashed to the railings out front. It is that sort of place.
This extraordinary waterfront property thirty minutes north of Kingston, Ontario is a film-set as much as it is a retreat from the daily grind, a titanic ski chalet as much as a cottage. It is Meech Lake and Camp David combined, it is more Davos than Eel Bay.
There are lower ceilings at major airports, I swear. The impression is of living in a mountain-top gallery space pumped just slightly more full of light and air than is strictly necessary. To spend time here is surely to wake every morning at the top of your game.
I have wandered this house for hours, and then made my way outside and tried, in my mind’s eye, to recreate the route just travelled from top to bottom, bottom to top. It is a scanning exercise that I fail every time. There are simply too many highlights to be considered one after the other; the centre cannot hold.
To reduce it to its essentials, it is an exquisitely rendered four-season log home or cottage, powered over four floors by geothermal energy. The lower level could well be a separate two-bedroom residence. Fill the fridge and away you go. The cinema is down here, and that snooker table. The floors underfoot are heated and as you pad over them to the eastern end of the space, and out to the pool deck (pausing only to lift rolled towels from the cart) you understand you might have been transported here by helicopter, or in the winter by sleigh.
It feels remotely cruel to say so, but a small forest went into the making of 1972, and a full sand beach must have been hoovered up to make all the glass for the windows. An army of top craftspeople deployed for most of a year. The view of the lake widened and stone stairs hammered into the Canadian Shield to make a route to the water’s edge.
The counters - the full acre of them - are in granite and the cabinets above are jointed and polished as if for a French Chateau. There are skylights and fireplaces, beams big enough to hold up New York. There are winding stairs to a hidden retreat with porthole enough to float a whale through it. In total you’ll eventually find five bedrooms (but could certainly make more) and four and a half bathrooms.
The appliances - Miele and Liebherr - are all top-notch, the Starlink and Bell Fibe work like a dream, and the EV charger is crouched at the side of the house like a dog waiting to welcome you home. There is nothing that the sellers haven’t inspected and upgraded since they moved in (they’re in Europe now and already miss the property dearly). Talk to them nicely and they might well leave the three-person infra-red sauna.
Outside, there is enough decking to make a ballroom, and a new stone firepit with wood storage. The idea is that your friends (or your ministers and presidents) are out here while the sun sinks into the water and the trees fill with colour. You’re far enough off the beaten track that the night sky here is world-class, but still only ten minutes from the village of Sydenham, thirty from Kingston, three hours from downtown Toronto, and ninety minutes, if that, from Ottawa.
The Virtual Tours
We had Billy-Jack Kimmerly go out to do his usual marvelous crystalline work, and he’s added a video that we’ll add to the socials.
In addition, the sellers had Birdhouse Media come up from Toronto. It’s their lovely, moody, cinematic video you see first here.
In total you’ve got more than 200 photographs here. That’s too many for some of you, maybe, but not nearly enough for those of you in love with the outdoors and the water, and a glorious Canadian log home. We’ll trim numbers for MLS, but there are no such shortcuts needed here. (Spin to the bottom for floor plans).
Birdhouse:
iGuide:
The Gallery (Birdhouse)
The Gallery (iGuide)
The Floor Plans
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