12 Charles St - SOLD
The Essentials
An Inner Harbour century home that’s been sensitively renovated over the last several months. Three bedrooms, parking, quartz counters, and oak and pine floors. An upstairs laundry. Stained glass…
The Bigger Picture
I’ve lived on Charles St about fifteen years. I suppose I could move if I wanted to. I’ve got options. I’ve even looked at a couple of houses over the years. But nothing seems to improve on what I already have. Much of that has to do with not just the house I live in (which, truth be told, feels like it’s crumbling around my ears some days) but with the street itself - the people on it, and the other streets it connects to, and the light from the river as active in the trees some days as a glut of gulls, and last couple of years the cafe up at the corner too.
In the weeks to come, a general store will open at the corner of John and Patrick. The owners have been posting pictures of the small-batch inventory as it arrives. Their shopping baskets came in last week. And the persistent rumour is that Monster Pizza will move in to the old Henry’s Restaurant spot at Montreal and Raglan. We’re incredibly lucky that we have these commercial spaces dotted throughout the neighbourhood. The opportunity is there for us to grow in more interesting ways than most. Until a few weeks ago there were SPAF art installations on front porches, and draped across the face of houses, tied loosely into the maples.
Sam will often walk the kayak down to the river from our house and then paddle north and around the tip of Belle Island to the third crossing. She could keep going up to Kingston Mills if she wanted. Other days she’ll drift under the causeway and past RMC to the wilds of Cedar Island. If you left home with a big enough boat, your next stop might as well be Ireland.
It’s a ten-minute walk from here to Pasta Genova. Maybe twelve or thirteen to Novel Idea, and the same to McBurney. You’re at The Elm in one. The Woollen Mill in five. I could do this all day.
But what about the house?
Well the house is going to suit you just fine. And then some. Good detached homes have been desperately hard to find. Inventory is at a thirty-year low. And so I expect the arrival of 12 Charles St on the market - at an anxious moment in your house search (or most likely your life), at a time when we’re all holding our breath - to feel like a welcome breath of fresh air.
The renovations have taken a few months. What to leave and what to refinish, what to replace altogether? Those seem the most likely questions the seller wrestled with. I watched him arriving and leaving each day, often around the same time I was coming and going. Cheri and I would drop in once in a while for a progress report, or just to sneak another look.
What we’re putting a sign in front of today is completely different from the house that was there in March. Back then there were two apartments here, and some low-slung arches trucked in from the 1970s. Earth, Wind & Fire posters stuck at a jaunty angle on the wall. And today? A single-family home with a brand new kitchen all gussied up with subway tiles and quartz counters. A full suite of stainless appliances. One-and-a-half baths and second-floor laundry. Refinished oak and pine floors. Stained glass. An interior side porch through which the light pours in. Three bedrooms and a driveway off to the side. A garden that makes me wonder whether limestone was quarried right here for the foundation.
You’ll look at the pictures, of course. And the floor plans. The map we’ve snuck in at the bottom of the page. And then maybe you’ll call us. We hope so. You’ll have to decide whether the idea of having a realtor living across and up the street makes this a non-starter for you, I suppose, but I swear that everyone else on the block is lovely.
