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downtown condo

8

About a year ago I lever­aged the equity in my cur­rent house to buy a down­town condo. It’s under con­struc­tion now, due to be fin­ished in another two years. My orig­i­nal inten­tion was to rent it out or sell it (depend­ing on mar­ket con­di­tions around the time of clos­ing), but ever since I came back from Europe, I’ve been flirt­ing with the idea of mov­ing there myself and rent­ing out my house instead.

I’ve missed that feel­ing of con­nec­tion after walk­ing in cities that were bustling and full of life. There’s a cer­tain inti­macy to urban liv­ing that I long for, where every­thing is within walk­ing dis­tance and peo­ple are all around. It doesn’t help that I work from home in a sleepy area in the east end, mostly inhab­ited by retirees.

facade

27 storeys of glass and metal.

It’s an extremely tempt­ing propo­si­tion. I’d finally have a bal­cony and view from a cor­ner unit on the sixth floor, close enough to the ground to do some peo­ple watch­ing but far away enough to stay pri­vate; some­thing I’ve missed greatly from my first years out of uni­ver­sity. I’d have big south-facing win­dows to fill the place with light in the morn­ings. I’d be in the heart of down­town, just a block off Elgin, walk­ing dis­tance from the Rideau Centre, Byward mar­ket, and the NAC. I’d have access to the 4500 sq. ft. recre­ation cen­tre which includes an indoor swim­ming pool, a sauna, fit­ness facil­i­ties, a pri­vate lounge, and guest suites.

The condo is also a lot more my style, as these are mod­ern, New York-inspired lofts (most of the suites tak­ing their names from NY neigh­bour­hoods and land­marks), each one with hard­wood floors, indi­vid­ual HVAC and stack­able washer/dryers, a flush European-style kitchen, and 24-hour concierge ser­vice. I get to pick out my colours and fin­ishes soon, and I’m already plan­ning where I’d want to put my furniture.

But I don’t know if I can give up the place I have now, due to the lux­u­ries afforded to me by the extra space: a spare room I can use as a photo and Tai Chi stu­dio, a giant closet, and least of all, a liv­ing room large enough to host inti­mate house shows or small gatherings.

Date  March 16, 2011
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Categories  Random

Large Print

6

Large print

Large print

I finally got a large print made for myself, of the frozen lake from my trip to New Hampshire. You really need to see the orig­i­nal from the entry (on black) to get an idea of what the pic­ture looks like, because the shot I took above doesn’t do it jus­tice as I was expos­ing for the gen­eral area in my liv­ing room, los­ing much of the detail of the pic­ture. At over 48″ wide and 32″ tall, it cost me a pretty penny, but it was oh so worth it.

After some extra tweak­ing on my end to bring out the con­trast, my awe­some printer brought out the trunks of the white birch trees in the left for­est using Photoshop, adding a touch of con­trast and detail. The pic­ture was lam­i­nated with a matte fin­ish, so there’s no glass to reflect (and hence dis­tract), from he win­dows. Then my framer used one of her new fram­ing tech­niques where she takes tex­tured fab­ric and stretches it over an inside bor­der (instead of a mat board), then adds a frame that’s smooth but not flat1. The colours fit right in with the walls, while the bor­der and frame matches the couch.

It’s the first pic­ture I’ve used to dec­o­rate the main floor of my house, because I’m really picky about the stuff I put up on my walls. This one was cho­sen because the sky, the sun­set, the ice and the pat­terns in it, all speak emo­tion to me, which is what I try to achieve in my pic­tures, and some­thing I enjoy look­ing at.

  1. This means I sign, stamp, and num­ber the pic­ture on the pic­ture itself, since there’s no mat board to write on. [↑]
Date  April 15, 2009
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Categories  Photos Random

Got My House Back

8

House stippling

The house is finally back to its’ for­mer glory. The exhaust pipes to my water heater and fur­nace have been replaced, the holes in the ceil­ings have been patched up, sanded, stip­pled, and painted.

This means a few things of significance:

  • I get to dress based on mood again. I would come home and hang my clothes off the ban­is­ter, then put the same clothes on in the morn­ing, because my closet doors would be taped shut to pre­vent dust and errant paint/stipple from get­ting in there.
  • I get to sleep in my bed again. The entire bed­room was a mess, so I had been sleep­ing on the couch for almost three weeks. It felt weird to go back to a big mat­tress, like I was sleep­ing on some sort of unlim­ited sur­face area.
  • I get to use my photo/Tai Chi stu­dio. Almost all my fur­ni­ture was moved to the guest room. I haven’t been able to prac­tice my Tai Chi, or take pic­tures of things against a drop sheet.
  • I have the use of my main com­puter. Playing games on a lap­top screen doesn’t cut it when you’re used to three 24″ mon­i­tors, and music sounds the way it’s sup­posed to when you have a decent subwoofer.
  • No more time off work. I’m lucky in that I have such a short com­mute, but being there dur­ing con­struc­tion still meant that I lost two days of pay.

I spent most of the week­end wip­ing dust of every­thing down­stairs — walls, mir­rors, dec­o­ra­tions, counter tops. The splat­ters of paint were taken care of with a bot­tle of Varsol and a Q-tip. A few paint touch-ups were needed too, but noth­ing too bad. Then the house got an over­all clean­ing, to get rid of the evi­dence of muddy boots, dirt, and ran­dom pieces of garbage brought in dur­ing the whole process.

My back and feet are still sore from rush­ing to get every­thing done, but it was oh so worth it to have the cozy com­fort of my house again.

Date  January 21, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

The Return of Water

4

Well, I have water. And hot water too. I’ve been doing loads of laun­dry and dishes in the dish­washer. Not to men­tion sweet, sweet BMs on a toilet.

Bathroom ceiling

Bedroom ceiling

But my bath­room and bed­room ceil­ings still look like this. Not to men­tion the coarse dust on every­thing and the uprooted fur­ni­ture. I had sev­eral entries with pic­tures to post, but my colour-calibrated mon­i­tors are sit­ting in the spare room. I have no idea when the con­trac­tor is going to be back to get every­thing dirty again. Otherwise, I’d do some cleaning.

Either the con­struc­tion com­pany is on hol­i­day (which con­tra­dicts what the worker said), or they’re dodg­ing me, because I haven’t been able to get a hold of any­one for days now. I’m stuck in limbo here, lit­er­ally liv­ing in the liv­ing room (what a fit­ting name). It’s left me rather sick and unmotivated.

Date  December 29, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Holiday Hell

6

Nightmare. The word almost every­one has been using to describe this hot water sit­u­a­tion. From my friends and cowork­ers, to the plumb­ing tech­ni­cians, to the sales reps, to the contractors.

When the con­trac­tor came over to make holes in my ceil­ing, he brushed against a pipe that went to the hot water tank, and since it was almost rusted com­pletely through, it snapped and started leak­ing. Water shoots out of the hole any time I turn the water on, so I’ve had to shut off the main valve. Now I have no water. I can’t wash my hands, I can’t go to the bathroom.

The exhaust pipe that goes to my fur­nace isn’t up to code any­more either, so even if I get all this work done on the house, my ceil­ing would have to be ripped up again when the fur­nace goes. And since mine is 12-years-old and rated for 15 years, it could die on me as soon as three years (or sooner). So I’ll be get­ting the fur­nace pipe replaced too, which essen­tially dou­bles my pipe instal­la­tion costs.

In addi­tion to mov­ing as much fur­ni­ture out of my room as pos­si­ble into my guest room (thereby rob­bing me of my photo stu­dio, Tai Chi prac­tice area, bed­room, and main com­puter), I’ll have to cover the remain­ing things in sheets to pro­tect them from the dust. When the pip­ing is all replaced1, the con­trac­tor needs to come in and patch up the holes, scrape all the stip­ple off my ceil­ing, respray the stip­ple on, and repaint it. I don’t even have an esti­mate of how much that’s going to cost.

The house is my one area of sta­bil­ity. Where I retreat to when every­thing else is falling apart. The one place I need to be con­stant. I won’t feel set­tled until it’s all been resolved.

And to think that I was look­ing for­ward to the hol­i­days. I was pic­tur­ing myself enjoy­ing my well-earned time off, eat­ing bacon and eggs, play­ing a few games, and start­ing some new projects.

How far away the image seems now.

  1. And with luck, they won’t refuse to do the job because they don’t have enough clear­ance. [↑]
Date  December 25, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life

Water Is Life, But Hot Water Is Living

10

Broken hot water tank

I have no hot water.

In the mid­dle of the week­end, my hot water tank broke down. I called the energy com­pany and was on hold for almost two hours. When I finally got through to some­one to trou­bleshoot my prob­lem, all he told me to do was unplug the tank and plug it back in again. Then he told me to wait an hour and call back to make an appoint­ment with a tech­ni­cian if it didn’t work. I refused to do this (after being on hold for so long already), so I made an appoint­ment right there.

The tech­ni­cian came today and told me that the pipes were leak­ing water, and the black area under at the bot­tom sig­ni­fied a car­bon monox­ide leak1. The entire hot water tank has to be replaced.

The good news is that my hot water tank is rented, so any repairs or replace­ments are cov­ered by the energy com­pany. The bad news is that the ven­ti­la­tion pipe that con­nects the tank to the out­side of the house is no longer up to code, and needs to be replaced before the hot water tank is replaced. The worse news is that my ceil­ing is fin­ished, so it needs to be ripped open for the new pip­ing to be installed then patched up again when it’s done, by an out­side con­struc­tion com­pany. The cherry on top is that nei­ther the pipe instal­la­tion or the destruction/construction is cov­ered by my condo or the energy com­pany, so I’ll have to shell out more money at a time I can’t afford it.

Until then, I can’t shower2, I can’t shave, I can’t do my dishes, I can’t do my laun­dry, I can’t rinse my mouth with­out using painfully cold ice water.

I can hon­estly say that I took hot water for granted.

But I won’t after this.

  1. Thankfully low enough that the two car­bon monox­ide detec­tors didn’t go off [↑]
  2. which is one of my favourite ways to unwind at the end of the day [↑]
Date  December 21, 2008
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos

Patterns in the Chaos

8

I hap­pen to have a chance to write now. It’s rain­ing, so nat­u­rally the win­dows are all open.

My life has been some­what chaotic lately. Weekends spent being social have been turned into intro­verted exile, a way of charg­ing my bat­ter­ies once again. The added ben­e­fit is that I have more time to tie up loose ends on my projects. I’m even get­ting back into the still photo medium again.

Dry erase boards

I installed these dry-erase marker boards next to my front door. I use them to keep track of my tasks, projects, and errands, so I can come home and imme­di­ately decide what I feel like doing. The two sil­ver clips are used for hang­ing notes and letters.

Nothing feels bet­ter than putting that thick black line through a task. Writing on frosted glass is pretty tasty too.

Dry erase board closeup

I use the other board for quotes, a way to keep myself moti­vated — or grounded — every time I pass by on the way in or out of the house. It’s also a nice way for me to prac­tice my hand-drawn typog­ra­phy, by try­ing to bal­ance char­ac­ters, words, and lines on the board in dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions in an esthetic manner.

There’s some­thing famil­iar about this. A feel­ing like I’ve been here before, not in this sit­u­a­tion exactly, but in the mid­dle of the chaos.

All I know for sure is that I feel like I can han­dle it much bet­ter than if this was hap­pen­ing a year ago.

Date  October 8, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Holiday Stretch

4

Hi there.

I’m already in hol­i­day mode. Sure, I have one day of work left — Monday — but my brain has checked out. I even took the day off yes­ter­day and made it a long week­end because I have extra vaca­tion days left, and they can’t be car­ried forward.

The chaise lounge on which I do my writing

This is how I spend most of my time nowa­days: on my new chaise lounge from EQ3, with a mug of tea by my side, in a gen­er­ally unkempt man­ner. Unshaven, with the flour­ish of a cowlick in my hair.

Last year, in which I declared that Christmas is dead, I stayed home out of spite, not directed at any­one but myself. This year, I’ve decided to go to Shirley’s for Christmas Eve and Christmas, and Pat and Jen’s for New Year’s.

But there’s a stretch of a sev­eral days in between in which I have no plans. Even though it’ll be a chance for me to do some extra writ­ing, work on my photo projects, maybe even relax a bit, part of me wishes I was busy like every­one else.

I know I don’t have any­thing to com­plain about. I’m lucky enough to be spend­ing the “impor­tant” days with friends who are impor­tant to me. I’m even lucky enough to have a choice of where to go. But I know that dur­ing the stretch, when other peo­ple has some­where to be, some­where to go, I’ll feel some­what for­lorn. They’ll have a place where they belong.

Maybe I’ll belong here, at home alone, on this won­der­ful chaise.

Date  December 23, 2007
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

A Trip to Zone Closer to Perfection

2

On a whim, I went to Zone after work. I’ve been in a dec­o­rat­ing mood lately. I spent about an hour in there, just gath­er­ing design ideas with what they had.

Thumbnail: Potpourri plate

Thumbnail: Potpourri plate closeup

I picked up a pin­cush­ion plate and some pot­pourri for my cof­fee table, replac­ing the glass bowl I had before, and lined it up with the edge of the chaise lounge.

Decorating my house has always been impor­tant to me, but I’ve never rushed into it. Part of the rea­son why it’s so empty right now is because I want to put up my own pic­tures, and I never had enough with which I was sat­is­fied to fill the walls. I don’t want pho­tos of mem­o­ries — what I have at work — I want pic­tures that set a cer­tain mood. Another thing that makes it hard is that I’ve never liked non-functioning dec­o­ra­tions; can­dles you’d never burn, baubles that don’t do any­thing, knick-knacks that clut­ter shelves don’t make sense to me.

Part of me wants to go out and buy every­thing at once and be set­tled, but another part of me never wants to finish.

Otherwise, I’d lose the thrill of the hunt, and the plea­sure of adding another thing that’s just right to the right place.

Date  August 27, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos Thoughts

The House In The Day

9

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.

Date  November 17, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Photos Random

The View Down Here

5

Thumbnail: View from my room

This is the view out my win­dow on the night of a snow­fall. The bed­rooms are in the base­ment, so I get a sub­ter­ranean look at my minia­ture lawn with pine tree, although the gar­den is now buried under 40cm of snow. There are the Moonlights, deprived of their charges from snow cov­er­ing their solar pan­els. There’s the A/C that cost me a month and a half salary.

A lit­tle box, out­lined by fence and porch, of my things.

I sleep with the blinds open in the win­ter because at night I see more this time of year than in the sum­mer. Snow makes the sky glow an ashen orange, a phe­nom­e­non I can’t myself explain. On some nights, it’s too bright to sleep and I have to mask my eyes, peek­ing out every few min­utes to make sure my win­ter par­adise is still out the win­dow until I fall asleep. When I feel espe­cially sen­ti­men­tal, I leave the win­dow open a crack to let in the smell of ice and dry air.

The price of this plea­sure is at least three dead in weather related inci­dents across the province of Ontario.

Date  December 18, 2005
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Categories  Photos Random

Trinary Maturity: The House

0

In the last year of high school, I was called into the guid­ance office for some direc­tion in choos­ing a post-secondary insti­tu­tion. The coun­cilor, a very, very Caucasian man, went through the fea­tures of each uni­ver­sity, not­ing espe­cially the ones with nice cam­puses. In an effort to save his time, I explained that the esthet­ics of a uni­ver­sity were of no con­se­quence to me, because they wouldn’t affect my life. Apparently this was a dif­fer­ent approach from other stu­dents, whom he believed decided on the direc­tion of their edu­ca­tion through a desire for lush lawns and big dorm rooms.

I’d always believed that I’d feel the same way about a house as a cam­pus. Give me enough room for my com­puter with walls thick enough to crank my music and I’ll be happy, I used to say. While this may still hold true, I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m even hap­pier with a nice place. I finally under­stood that coun­cilor, four years later, after chang­ing uni­ver­si­ties for a brief post-graduate stint. The new cam­pus was big, mod­ern, and inspir­ing; quite a dif­fer­ence from my pre­vi­ous uni­ver­sity with its brown build­ings and con­stant construction.

It’s the same when com­par­ing a rented place of res­i­dence and an actual house. A house begets secu­rity, and in turn, a sense of con­fi­dence. There’s a dis­tinct feel­ing, every day, wak­ing up in one’s own home. Knowing that every pay­cheque is going towards some equity, a lit­tle piece of prop­erty I call my own. Having a com­fort zone, a place that I don’t have to deal with any­one I don’t want to. A place where I make the rules, not hav­ing to answer to land­lords or security.

It was the process too, that helped me grow. Aside from the com­mon sense of own­ing a house as a long-term invest­ment, I was inspired (or should I say “dri­ven”) to move because of a room­mate. After one par­tic­u­larly child­ish con­flict, I decided more than four months before I actu­ally had time to look, to buy a house and take Trolley with me. We moved in before the lease was up on the apartment.

I went through the entire process myself, know­ing noth­ing at the start. I had never done any­thing on this scale before, and while it may seem triv­ial to those who have been ini­tia­tors their entire lives, this was a big step for me. It let me know that I could actu­ally accom­plish the things I want.

And that cast aside all the doubt that was hold­ing me back.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
Date  July 7, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

The Garden In The Back

1

Thumbnail: Garden at night

It turns out I have a garden.

Thumbnail: Flower close-up

I moved in when there was still snow on the ground, and I only knew that there was a lit­tle patch of soil in my back­yard from the few dead stems stick­ing out of the snow canopy. Eventually the snow melted, then spring came and passed, but the soil remained bar­ren and dry. Summer started, and Trolley noticed some sprout­ing when he would go to smoke out­side. He pulled some dead growth and weeds but did noth­ing more, not even a water­ing. The gar­den just started to bloom by itself.

Thumbnail: Flower with bee

I have no idea what kind of plants they are, but they seem to be doing well.

Date  July 2, 2005
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Categories  Photos Random
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