953 COTTAGE FARMS ROAD - $824,900

The Essentials

An absurdly stylish custom-built home ten minutes from downtown Kingston. Over 2500 square feet of lavish finished space arranged behind two storeys of glass, just a stone’s throw from the St Lawrence River (to which there is access at the end of the road).

I’ll hold an open house on Sunday June 15, between 2 pm and 4 pm. Any offers will be reviewed the next day.

The Bigger Picture

My grandfather - this is going back a half century - kept two oversized liver-spotted hunting dogs. They slept malodorously on a tired rug in front of a fierce fire large enough and hot enough that I expected the stone house to pretty much melt around this Cotswold scene. The dogs frightened me: their hooked yellow nails like the weird blooms on a desert flower; the snarling way their lips flopped away from teeth lavish with tartar as they huffed through deep canine dreams. More precisely, it frightened me to be in such low-ceilinged, oppressive quarters with them. I was better when we headed out to the surrounding fields to collect fallen horse chestnuts up near the old church, while the dogs gambolled and danced. My favourite moments with them - the only moments I truly enjoyed - were when a pheasant or partridge, some brown bundle of feather and alarm anyway, would startle from the long yellow grasses and the dogs would freeze on tiptoe, their snouts pointed significantly at the bird, sighting it for my grandfather who carried a rifle on these walks whenever we kids stayed at the house. The dogs’ focus, their sudden and absolute stillness, haunts me still.

I bring that up for a reason, I swear.

This house I’ve listed for sale this morning points, with a glass prow two-storeys high, at the St Lawrence river in the same way those dogs pointed at birds launching themselves huffily into Wordsworth skies. Every moment at the house feels distilled from life’s more frantic business. Its architectural pose - seeking the river, identifying it, calling it out - feels like a meditation, a way of identifying real solace in a life. It transforms this splendid arrangement of wood and concrete and glass into a refuge, a haven, a place to wait out the madding crowd and even, however improbably, to stop time in its tracks.

There are other, simpler ways of approaching this marvellous new listing. It is a high-ceilinged bungalow as full of light as any house I’ve listed. And as stylish. The stairs from the upper to the lower level are as dramatic as any Paris runway. They bisect the living and dining areas from the living room with its gas fireplace set into a brick wall dramatic as a Peaky Blinders set. Between the two spaces there are no more than twenty feet, but that triangulation of glass, and the mighty views, make it feel as if there is a whole world contained within the four walls. It is as if you have set up shop at the glass-railed brink of a canyon. You could sell tickets.

The concrete counters in the kitchen gleam and are more delicately fashioned than I have seen before. The dining area opens to a splendid deck. There is a bedroom on this main level, as well as laundry and a three-piece bathroom. There are, as if you need them, two skylights, one for each half. At night, if you move to precisely the right spots, you can isolate constellations in those frames. You hang the universe on the ceiling.

At the foot of that grand staircase you are face to face with all that angled glass, with the reeds across the lawns and beyond those, past the willow tree, there is all that water, the beginning of a long haul to the Atlantic. The family room down here has sliding doors to the outside, and another gas fireplace. There are two more bedrooms, including the principal with a walk-in closet and a bathroom so good it feels you’ve stumbled into some Manhattan penthouse, and might hide out there until the paparazzi tire of waiting for you.

It is a glamorous home, one I could talk about all day. It is wrapped in wood and capped (this is an important part of the picture, one that I’ve saved for last) by a solar array that generates over $5000 in income per year! When the contract ends six years from now, that power can be converted to cover home hydro costs.

Call me and I’ll tell you everything. Or we can meet out there (though, to be fair, I think you’ll have trouble finding reason to leave).