66 CHERRY ST - $489,900
The Essentials
A stylishly renovated two-bedroom detached home in the Fruit Belt with a detached garage
The Bigger Picture
I think if I was a young (too late for that) professional (I do my best) in good standing (last time I checked) I’d want to live at 66 Cherry St. It would be a signifier, a way of telling the world I was on the right track. I’d pad around the place whistling (though very grateful at the same time that no one could hear me). The fact that I don’t qualify (bad knees) is a deeper sadness for me than you might realise.
With me out of the running (literally, most days) that leaves you with a free shot at the house. And I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to explore the possibility. It’s exciting to see someone go into what was, after all, a home built a century ago with modest ambitions (comfortable, warm, dry, economical to run, well-located), and lavish some real love on it. And not only that but express this affection with fine materials and craftsmanship. Real love isn’t easy to find, after all.
It also occurs to me that I must at some point have described this house (because this isn’t the first time we’ve listed this adorable spot) as being as sweet as a liquorice all-sort. I mean, just look at it. But I can’t find that description this morning. So either I am becoming forgetful, or I am beginning to invent my own history. One of those two feels cleverer than the other. Whichever it is, it’s a delight to serve up this house again, which has been properly and stylishly renovated since the last time. It is a cottage reimagined, a two-bedroom house with refinished floors the colour of toffee, and stone counters like the vanilla ice cream you can buy with the flecks of vanilla bean ground into it. There is a full bathroom on each level and an office on the main floor that could serve as a third bedroom. A gas fireplace in the living room, and laundry tucked away towards the back. The layout feels a miracle of thoughtful design, like a a Swiss Army knife rewritten as a floor plan. You could sit in the secret garden and try to figure out its magic on the back of a napkin, maybe, play-act a dinner theatre version of Einstein, or else set up a complicated lab in the detached garage and try to unravel exactly how it’s still possible to list this much charming real estate in this downtown location for under five hundred thousand.
