1049 Highway 2 E, Kingston, ON K7L 4V1

The once-formal gardens that surround this intensely pretty (and nicely updated) limestone and sandstone home just east of downtown Kingston have let their guard down just slightly. A chicken coop in one corner. Geometries hinted at rather than imposed. The barn leans so casually against the house it might be about to tell a good joke. The familiar touchstones are all here; mile-wide window ledges, softwood floors worn the colour of toffee or honeycomb, the wide porch like a dinner theatre stage. But there is more to 1049 than fearsome symmetry. A fireplace divides the living and dining rooms like a warm-hearted referee. Across the hall is a more private parlour, or home office. The wallpapers are modern, high-end, but nod knowingly to the history, as if William Morris popped by to tip his cap. There are four bedrooms, with ceilings high enough to accommodate the grandest of four-poster beds, the most elaborate of libraries. And the bathroom on this level, dead-centre at the front of the house, is a period piece, with its clawfoot tub crouched beneath the window like a big white cat. The basement, home once, to Downton Abbey-level shenanigans, and steaming stock pots swinging above the fire, is a cool retreat from the upper-floor hubbub, and also where the laundry is managed. It is a rambling, stylish country home. The shooting parties are long past. The life on offer is more literary than that, more urban farmer, more university prof, more doctor. I imagine kids tearing between bedrooms, up and down the stairs; their laughter sticking to the walls.