44 JANE AVENUE - SOLD
The Essentials
A renovated and very pretty four-bedroom brick home in Strathcona Park. An extraordinary sunroom overlooks fabulous gardens.
The Bigger Picture
Strathcona Park. Meaning the area north of Princess St and west of Sir John A. East of Portsmouth and south of Counter. A little under 1500 homes in total. You can likely see the neighbourhood in your head right now, its borders all lit up and everything else painted in some endless black. As if there is no other place to live. And many who live here feel that’s about right.
I like the topography of Strathcona Park. All its ups and downs. And I like the big trees, the impressive variety of those, and the way a lot of the houses sit back from the road, either at the crest of some miniature hill, or at the bottom of one. Downtown where I live, it’s pretty flat. A flood plain more or less here on Charles, and mostly I’m okay with that. But once in a while I envy the way Strathcona mixes it up.
44 Jane Avenue sits at the neighbourhood’s southern boundary. Beyond the back fence is the Peachtree Inn. And yes, we know that means the house isn’t going to thrill everyone. Check out the pictures below and decide for yourselves. We won’t be offended. And we don’t want to waste your time. But we’ll say this about that:
We’ve stood in the back garden, me and Cheri, and had a look up at that wall, the room windows pushed into it like so many chocolate buttons into a sponge cake. We’ve peered hard and have yet to discern any interior detail whatsoever. Or - and this is more important - we’ve yet to see any face up there looking down at us judgmentally.
Because people don’t care to look, is one reason for us not seeing anyone or anything. You check into the Peachtree to sleep, that’s it, not to lean into the glass and wonder who it is owns this lovely brick house with all the peonies, and those daisies so brilliant they must surely be dyed. Because they do that, don’t they, dye flowers early morning in great Peruvian nurseries? As if nature isn’t quite vivid enough. The floors of a hundred cargo planes at the end of the day are awash: tidepools of fuschia, aluminum ponds of violet.
It wouldn’t bother us, that Inn being there, in other words. I actually find a sort of solace in knowing there are plenty of people out there resting their heads, trying to make a life, a living. And I like the way the building is the perfect buffer between Jane and Princess.
I like even more the house itself. The way a sunroom has been added to the western end, with skylights and picture windows, a vaulted ceiling to accommodate the ladders of books you’d surely install.
The living room has a wood fireplace with a surround like something out of a design book, and a window that looks over the front garden, with its pebbled walkways and intricate design approaching the detail of a zen garden. All that’s missing is the rake.
There are two good bedrooms on the main floor (or a bedroom and an office) and two more upstairs, both lovely fresh spaces with new flooring and new paint. These rooms feel properly removed from the hubbub of the principal rooms, as if among the builder’s skill-set was the bone-deep knowledge that privacy and quiet is important for the harmonious working of a family.
The old radiators have been replaced too, and to my eye there’s not much more beautiful in a house than a boiler system and new modern, efficient rads.
The basement here is unfinished, and I really think you’ll leave it that way, but at the same time there’s room down there for a workshop, or even a gym.
I’m not telling you anything the last few paragraphs that you can’t glean from the pictures and the floor plans below. What’s more important than the bullet list I’ve apparently begun, is to know that the house feels as well-built as any we’ve seen in the subdivision. The brick itself is nearly luminous, for example, and up close it seems it might have been laid row upon row just last week. My neighbour when I was a kid was a bricklayer. A meticulous Scot with a belt cinched tight (and a bit high) to gather in his olive khakis reinforced and still patched at the knees. I watched him with his chalk and his lines, his mortar board and his brushes, as he built a wall between us and him. Not because he didn’t like us - we got along well - but because it was what he did. Well I don’t suppose he did any work finer than that here at 44 Jane.
John, wherever you are, you’d be proud.
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The full iGuide, so you can spin around a bit, is right here. And here are the Realtor.ca details.
The Gallery
