RTP-area local music and culture

[Duncan Murrell <dvmurrell AT nc.rr.com>]

Hey Folks,

Please forgive this, the longest rental ad ever; it's just that I love 
this house and I have a lot to say about it.  Here's the bottom line, 
to save you time:  3 bedrooms, 2 bath, brick ranch house in a very 
convenient location to UNC, Duke, RTP, wooded lot, $895/month, 
available June 1.

We've lived in the house for almost eight years, and we have really 
loved it. It was built in the early 1960s and it's located across the 
street (NC 54) from the Mardi Gras bowling alley, Millennium Fitness, 
and the Tsunami Japanese noodle shop I was raving about on this list 
just a few months ago. It takes about two minutes to get onto I-40, 10 
minutes to get to the corner of Franklin and Columbia in the worst 
traffic, and about 20 minutes to get to Duke's West Campus.  The house 
has hardwood floors, except for the kitchen and dining room, which were 
recently redone in a slate laminate that looks quite cool. We've 
repainted the whole place twice, and there isn't a lick of wallpaper 
left. (You may like to have the walls in our little girl's room -- 
she's four months -- redone; they were lovingly painted in green and 
yellow, with Carolina blue on the ceiling.) The dishwasher and range 
are new, and the refrigerator and stacked washer and dryer are newish 
-- within the last three years. The living room/kitchen/dining room 
area is fairly open with nice sight lines into the back yard  through 
the sliding glass door, from almost anywhere in those three rooms. To 
break it up a little, we added a new kitchen island/peninsula with 
storage on the kitchen side and bookshelves on the living room side. 
It's been a really useful addition, and we do a lot of cooking. All the 
bathroom fixtures have been updated and replaced, all the cabinets in 
the kitchen have been repainted and have received updated hardware.

The living room is wired for cable, and so is one of the bedrooms, 
which I've used as an office -- the cable was for my cable modem.

It has a big deck out back, a porch with a porch swing out front, a 
fairly large kitchen garden out the kitchen door with plenty of space 
for tomatoes, peppers, and our growing crop of oregano, rosemary, 
lavender and three kinds of thyme. It's on a wooded half-acre lot in a 
small neighborhood that abuts one of the waterfowl impoundments, which 
means we get more than our fair share of song birds coming to the 
backyard feeders, which we typically hang from a few of the fifteen old 
dogwoods that are scattered around the yard underneath the huge 
longleaf pines, oaks, sweet gum and tulip poplars. (I can provide a 
list of the different species of birds I've spotted while eating my 
breakfast -- it's more than 20 now, including ruby-crowned kinglets, 
Eastern towhees, downy and red breasted woodpeckers, and the coolest 
songbird I know, the brown-headed nuthatch. If you're a goldfinch fan, 
we've got plenty of those, too.) In front, I've established a couple of 
raised beds in the sunny part of the yard, and at times I've had great 
success growing vegetables out there. For the last couple of years I've 
been experimenting with odd perennials in those beds, but you'd be 
welcome  to do whatever you want with them. Or, I could get rid of them 
and re-seed with grass. I've also planted a tulip magnolia (deciduous), 
a couple of American holly trees from my Dad's yard in Maryland, to go 
along with the _giant_, old, gorgeous camelia (pinkish white blooms) 
that lives along the side of the house, right next to the big gardenia. 
There's also an acuba off the side of the porch that is unusually large 
and flourishing; I think it's quite old, too. Of course, the house has 
the required azaleas, a butterfly bush, and an old rhododendron.

The only reason we're trying to rent this house is that we've fallen in 
love with another, older, slightly bigger house, and this house -- 
which is 1,200 square feet -- is a little cozy for three adults and a 
baby. If we move, it won't be so far away that I won't be available to 
take care of things, or to make sure they're taken care of quickly. I 
have no desire to be an absentee landlord. We're also not looking to 
make a killing on the rent, as you can tell.

We'd like to find some folks who would appreciate the house. It holds a 
lot of sentimental value for us.

If you're interested, please call me at my office,  919-933-1091, or 
e-mail me. I'm available to show it anytime, day or night. And please 
feel free to pass this along to whomever -- friends, couples, couples 
with kids, grad students, you name it -- you think might be interested. 
I've got pictures to send, and I'll do that on request.

Thanks,

Duncan

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RattleJar  www.rattlejar.com
3 Winston Place
Chapel Hill, NC  27514
o: 919.933.1091  fax: 919.933.1092