13 ST CATHERINE ST - SOLD
The Essentials
A superbly renovated, detached three-bedroom home on a dead-end street with a toboggan hill at the front door. Your children will love you for moving.
The Bigger Picture
St Catherine is one of those streets that you probably only know if you live in the neighbourhood. It will be especially familiar if you have young kids. You’ll have watched them careen down the unofficial (and impressive) toboggan hill at the end of the street, is my guess. You’ll probably have ridden that slope a few times yourself, and, if you’re like me, lost your breath more than you’d like to admit climbing back to the summit.
St Catherine St, for the rest of you, runs half a dead-end block north of Pine St between Patrick and Barrie. Whether that puts it in the McBurney Park neighbourhood, or the Inner Harbour, or The Fruit Belt, is not for me to decide. The boundaries are fluid here. Suffice to say that you are within ten minutes’ walk of the downtown core, the Park, the Cataraqui River, Daughters Grocery and Pizza Monster. You are, in every sense, at home.
Number 13 is one house from the end of the street. It’s detached and it’s very pretty and it’s been both expertly and extensively renovated. To my eye it reads like a Toronto renovation rather than a Kingston one. Specifically, the ground floor has been entirely opened up. There is no remnant of an archway between the living and dining rooms, there is no hallway, no isolated kitchen. Instead there is just a rather glorious rectilinear space with light coming in at the front and at the back, and nothing to stop it from meeting up precisely in the middle. It’s more expensive to renovate this way - you’re hiding posts and beams, and protecting structure in a way that does real damage to the bank balance - but the end result is striking. You live as well as it’s possible to live in these houses as they push close to their 150th anniversary.
The gas fireplace beside the front window provides a focal point, and a nod to history, but this is really just back-up to the brilliant cold-temperature heat pump that was installed last year and does all the ultra-efficient heavy lifting heat-wise (and cool-wise). There are pot lights and French doors, and a stacked washer and dryer in the corner of the kitchen that makes it feel downright European. The outside deck and the gardens will enhance both your espressos and your Merlots.
Upstairs there are three bedrooms (though presently one of them is set up as a place to hide with a movie or a good book ), and a bathroom that involves both modern shower stall and clawfoot tub. I like very much that some of the old, battered doors have been retained upstairs. The paint /no-paint patterns on their faces are like maps from a Victorian atlas.
There are new layers of insulation, and upgraded electrical and plumbing (and permits pulled when necessary); the list is a long one. And the sellers have enjoyed the freshness of the house, the dramatically improved sightline, the way it feels so much more sociable in there now. But best of all is its location on St Catherine St, the street you’re not sure you’ve heard of, but the one you’ll visit in the next couple of days with your agent, I hope, or on Sunday for the open house.
The Virtual Tour
The Gallery
Summer Snapshots
The Floor Plans
