143 Charles St - Sold

The Essentials

A two-bedroom Inner Harbour stucco cottage with parking.

The Bigger Picture

Now, if you’re here on a basketball scholarship and you think to yourself one day while dribbling circles around lesser mortals, “I should invest in some real estate, stop paying all this damn rent,” then 143 Charles is—and we hate to say this—probably not the right fit. You’re going to spend the rest of your days feeling like you’ve washed ashore in Lilliput.

I say that not because it isn’t a good house, it really is. It’s chock-full of promise and century-old character. A two-bedroom stucco cottage that’s pretty as a picture nearly at the head of Charles, which means right up the street from The Elm and just down the hill from McBurney Park.

Rather I say it because we’re just not talking nine-foot ceilings here, or even eight. We’re talking acute angles and wall shadows like something out of Expressionist cinema. We’re talking about a house in which you will develop muscle memory, a reliable way to navigate in the dark the swooping roofline and the step-up landing. A funhouse sort of house, and we mean that in the best possible sort of way.

We’re talking country charm and low-to-the ground comforts. I’d be happy, more than that, to sit in the kitchen with the Times and imagine my Cotswold grandparents across the table, or out in their tweeds in the pretty little yard. A bite in the air from the inland sea.

There is parking set down quietly behind the house like a good dog. And an old room on the back of the house that I suppose you could lop off and add space to the garden, but to my mind it would do well with some investment, and would suit a woodstove and a fine stereo, some plugged-in headphones and a mid-century lounger. You could leave me there for years. The lodger who just wouldn’t leave.

It could be brilliant, we think, and if you polish and tweak it, push a little here and there, we swear you’ll fall head over heels. It just isn’t tall.

The iGuide is right here.

And the Realtor.ca version of things is here.

The seller’s plan is to review offers at noon on Friday March 12.