182 Queen St, Napanee: SOLD
The Essentials
A four-bedroom detached house with finished basement and an in-ground pool in very pretty and river-side Napanee. All for not much more than the price of a dinner and a bottle of decent wine in Toronto.
The Bigger Picture
Napanee is twenty minutes from Kingston, and about the same from Belleville. The 401 runs past the door. Prince Edward County is to the south-east. All of which you know. There are craft brewers these days and fancy shoe shops. A bakery selling date squares that look about as necessary to my life as air. There is an animal sanctuary down the road, and the finest latte I know of is steamed right off Dundas. There are fine red-brick Victorian homes on acres of green lawn, and there are run-down cottages barely big enough to fit your bike inside. I read that the town developed in the way we see it now at the site of a waterfall, and logs were floated downstream from the forests just north.
I tell you all this because I was looking at a satellite shot of the area this morning, slowly zooming in on the few blocks just north of Napanee's downtown core. A newish neighbourhood, only now pushing 40. I slid the map over and positioned 182 Queen at the very centre of the world (always a satisfying manoeuvre) and counted at least twenty swimming pools snagged in the frame. They were dotted about like so many sapphires set into a spreading brooch of precious metals and crushed emerald. The river's silver ribbon wound just to the east.
The pools - including the modest one here at 182 - speak of the life you might lead here, and nod also to the bright and well-maintained neighbourhood you'll be moving into. The streets are studded with large, shade-giving trees, and the driveways are long enough for the boat as well as the sedan you’ll polish every Saturday morning. There is space between all the houses (what a concept) and there is birdsong rather than road noise.
The house itself is a classic four-bedroom two-storey, with a modern granite-topped kitchen (and stainless appliances), hardwood floors on the main level, four bedrooms above, the master with an ensuite, and even a finished basement. It’s a pretty house, set back from the road and filled with light on even the greyest of days (like the one on which we took the photographs). I scroll down through those and shake my head a bit when I consider that you’d add a hundred grand, easy, if you wanted this house in Kingston.
The only puzzle to solve, then, is why exactly you haven't considered moving here sooner, where so much can be had for so little.
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The plan is to review any offers at 2 pm on Friday September 11. Here, to help you decide, is the full iGuide. And here is the Realtor.ca listing.
