125 Raglan Road $374,900
THE ESSENTIALS
A downtown bungalow just down the hill from McBurney Park. Two beds on the main floor and a smart kitchen and bath. A main-floor family room and a really fabulous deck. The basement is finished too. Open Saturday and Sunday (April 27 and 28), from 2-4. Any offers to be reviewed at 3.30 pm on April 29.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
125 Raglan Road is one of a row of pretty bungalows built nearly one hundred years ago on the side of the hill just north of Skeleton Park. There are about four of them all lined up. There would have been views back then down over leafy Markland St, sure, and then John, but mostly you’d have peered over fields and woods, over the steely interior workings of the Cataraqui River and the dense histories of Belle Island, with the Woollen Mill spinning away to the north east. The factory that made the dressed stone blocks for houses like this one, and for a few dozen more in this neighbourhood, was just down the hill off Patrick St.
Only four decades ago, about when I first moved into the neighbourhood, Raglan Rd felt like a frontier of sorts, a road at the edge of something, but it’s a mighty popular address these days. We’ve sold a few wonderful houses on the street recently, and some of my favourite people live along its length, or a few steps away.
125 has one of the best decks in town. An odd place to start, maybe, but you can’t see it from the street and that makes noting it important from a real estate perspective. But it’s also one of the property’s great charms. It strikes me as being like a stage drilled by well-paid engineers into the hard stone of the Hollywood Hills, a couple hundred feet of well-organized timber upon which to gather with a few dozen of your closest friends and survey the changing world. A platform to arrange and re-arrange the glammy outdoor furniture and the twin striped hammocks, the gleaming barbecue, and also to plug in the turntable and blast the Baxter Dury album you’ve just discovered and can’t leave well enough alone. Given the fact these houses are modest in their square footage, all this fresh outdoor space feels like a lottery ticket cashed in. I’d be out here at all hours.
Not that the house itself is any sort of slouch. It’s well-renovated and well-organized, full of light and far-off ceilings. There is a hardwood the colour of sun-hit sand on the ground floor, and a splendid bathroom besides. A good functional kitchen with stainless appliances is opposite a dining room big enough for family to arrive on the holidays. The rear addition is a family room now and it’s just fine with a stuffed sectional and a big-screen TV if that’s your thing. Up front are two bedrooms, the second of which is smallish, no denying it, but you’ll put a double bed in there and still have room for a crate or two of books and records, a turntable on a teak stand, and well, there go your teenage years.
The basement is finished too, and there’s a comfortable rec room with a high window, and a further room at the back of the house is set up for yoga, or weights. It’s quiet and meditative down there, the sort of space Leonard Cohen might have sought out. But you put in a big glass door and the garden light and wildlife will change its monkish demeanour in an instant.
The MLS® listing is right here (or will be any minute), for those of you wanting something a bit more down to earth (and if that’s the case, congrats on making it this far).
The usual brilliant virtual tour from Jordan and the gang at iGuide is here. Floor plans, 360-degree waltzes, you name it.
See you at one of the open houses, I hope. Any offers will be reviewed on Monday afternoon.
