152 years ago someone pushed one limestone block against another and began the process of building 145 james st. The world is different now, and so is the house, but it retains its modest, low-to-the-ground charm and the sense that another century and a half will see it sitting just as proudly. 145 is the most westerly of three attached inner harbour cottages and the setting sun warms its flank every afternoon. The interior, while showing plenty of the limestone, and sporting pine floors gone the colour of good toffee, has been thoroughly modernised. There is a lemon-yellow steel I-beam dividing the front sitting room from the back half, and a glass-sided stair rail, fixed at its bottom end to a ballycanoe newel post that looks like something pinched from a giant’s sewing room. The smart galley kitchen has laundry tucked at one end and extra storage at the other, and the loft makes for the quietest of bedrooms, an impressionist nest tucked into the eaves. The yard is leafy and private with a shed for the bikes. It’s a diminutive house that doesn’t feel small, and for the single professional or in-love couple, it really is picture book stuff. Reduced now by a whopping $50,000!
