The House In The Day

A few pic­tures of my house, some­thing that’s become a sym­bol of my tran­si­tion into adult­hood. My next house project is get­ting enlarged prints of my pho­tos to hang around the house.

My brightly-lit breakfast nook

The first thing you see when walk­ing in the front door is the break­fast nook. It’s one of the best fea­tures of the house, espe­cial­ly in the morn­ing. Even though it’s on the south side, it’s extreme­ly bright and sun­ny. The win­dows face a major road, so I usu­al­ly have the blinds closed for a lit­tle pri­va­cy, or open them when I’m feel­ing social.

Kitchen: stove view

Plenty of cupboards

There are two path­ways that lead into the kitchen: the break­fast nook on one side and the hall­way on the oth­er. It’s a rather nar­row place, but there’s enough elbow room to do some aggres­sive cook­ing. Tons of cup­boards and plen­ty of table space keep every­thing tidy.

My dining area

I recent­ly bought this din­ing set from EQ3. Most things from there are cus­tom-made: I was allowed to chose the mate­r­i­al and colour of the seats, as well as the met­al fin­ish and diam­e­ter of the glass. The first thing I did when I bought the house, before I had things moved in, was to have a dim­mer switch installed here, and in the two bed­rooms. I had the entire area pro­fes­sion­al­ly paint­ed a neu­tral beige for a café feel.

Living room: TV view

Living room: couch view

Trolley took most of the liv­ing room with him when he moved out, so I’m still look­ing for pieces. It’s the one part of the house I’m not sat­is­fied with yet. I’d like to pur­chase one more couch, and a book­case to clean up that shelf. In the future I’ll be blow­ing up a few of my pic­tures for the walls. The TV is hooked up to the dig­i­tal cable box, an HD DVD play­er, an HD Gamecube con­nec­tion, and a lap­top (which unfor­tu­nate­ly does­n’t out­put DVI). The couch was also from EQ3, and the cof­fee table, prob­a­bly my favourite piece in the house, is from Zone.

Basement stairs

Main bathroom

One of the odd­i­ties of the house is the fact that the bed­rooms are in the base­ment. It real­ly turns some home buy­ers off, but I did­n’t mind. It’s nice to have some stairs; they act as a gen­er­al par­ti­tion between the work and rest areas, and have come to define non-stu­dent liv­ing for me.

Guest room

Trolley used to be in this room. I haven’t decid­ed what to do with it yet. I may turn it into a guest room, a pho­to stu­dio (which is doubt­ful, because of the red paint and how small it is), or a tai chi stu­dio. Most like­ly the for­mer, since it’s the only open-space large enough in the house for me to prac­tice.

My room, bed view

My room, desk view

My room, mirror view

The bed­room is where I spend most of my time. It’s become a safe­ty zone. The good thing about Ikea is that it’s so easy to match things in a set or series. I had the mir­rors installed soon after I bought the house, and they hide an entire wall clos­et.

These are some of the most tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult pic­tures I’ve tak­en. A 1.6x field-of-view-crop-fac­tor meant that I lost a lot of the wide end of my lens, and mixed light­ing con­di­tions made things espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult. I did­n’t take pic­tures of the sec­ond bath­room or the laun­dry room. In the next series, I’ll get shots of the house at night.

The house changes it’s per­son­al­i­ty when it’s dark and moody.

9 comments

  1. Your house is scary-spot­less. (I sup­pose it’s because you are pre­sent­ing it to us.)
    I thought mir­rors in the bed­room were a feng shui taboo. ?

  2. it’s weird, i only know you from your blog, but your house is exact­ly how i imag­ined your liv­ing quar­ters to be like. nice decor! i real­ly like that red colour. and your sofa.

  3. Gorgeous place. Love the inten­si­ty of col­or and sim­plic­i­ty of mod­ern lines. Of course, that may not be sur­pris­ing, since we shop at the same stores but you do to much bet­ter effect.

  4. Holy crap your house is gor­geous. Almost exact­ly how I imag­ine my future house to be, only I’d have more stuff on the walls.

  5. Gorgeous house; love the style of your bed­room.

  6. @Xibee — I try to keep my house as spot­less as pos­si­ble actu­al­ly. The only place that deosn’t stay clean very well is the kitchen stove. To be hon­est, I’m com­plete­ly igno­rant about the prin­ci­ples of feng shui, but I don’t know if I’d believe in them even if I did.

    @kiddo — Someone told me the same thing once when they saw my room. People say they can tell a lot about me from the design of my blog. I’ve always liked sim­ple lines and min­i­mal­is­tic designs.

    @Pearl — I nev­er real­ly thought that the colours were intense until you men­tioned it. Now when I walk from room to room I notice the dis­tinc­tion. I think almost every­one shops at Ikea for one thing or anoth­er, since they have such well-priced things. It’s too bad the qual­i­ty has dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years.

    @Reno — I’m think­ing of hav­ing more of my pic­tures on the walls actu­al­ly, but I’m still test­ing dif­fer­ent pho­to ser­vices for the qual­i­ty of blow-ups. My cam­era is rather lim­it­ed to 8.2 megapix­els, so I’m try­ing to push the lim­its of how big the posters can be. I don’t think I’ve tak­en enough pic­tures that I’d be sat­is­fied with hav­ing up yet either.

    @Vi — Thanks!

  7. I ‘ve actu­al­ly just blown up a lot of pic­tures to 8X11 size, plac­qued them, and put them up in a kind of grid. The shape of the grid keeps it from being clut­tered, and the size lets you keep the pic­tures with­in res­o­lu­tion.

  8. I recent­ly had some 8x12” pic­tures done and the qual­i­ty is nice, but they’re still not as large as I would like. I may con­sid­er try­ing some sort of grid lay­out if I can’t push the lim­its of my megapix­els to where I want.

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