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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It turns out I have a gar­den.

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.

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