Second Apartment – Our First Home Together
October 2011 – May 2015
Holiday Home Video Tour (December 2014)
First Apartment – The Bachelorette Pad
(February 2008- October 2011)
Farewell House Tour Video
October 2011 – May 2015
Holiday Home Video Tour (December 2014)
(February 2008- October 2011)
Farewell House Tour Video
As we get down to our final weeks living in our apartment, I’m battling mixed feelings of relief and nostalgia. This was the first home that Garrett and I shared together, and it’s full of so many great memories from the last three and a half years. As we get try to enjoy these final days before our next big adventure, I thought I’d share some of the things that I’m really going to miss about this place…and a few of those that I will not miss.
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I will miss the old neighbourhood.
We were lucky to find an apartment in an older historical neighbourhood and it was kind of a dream come true to be surrounding by these amazing well cared for homes. I’ll admit that we never really got into the community – partly because we didn’t think we would stay here even as long as we did – but it was still lovely to get to walk around and enjoy it.
I will not miss the traffic.
Ironically enough, this apartment in a quiet suburb town had way more traffic going on than my busy apartment in Little Italy, Toronto. The guy across the street (we call him “the hero”) always flies out of his driveway into traffic like its the start of the Indy 500. For about a year, every night around 11pm there was someone who drove by and honked at a house nearby. We made up lots of stories for this scenario – a scorned lover? a rogue squirrel who jumps out in front of cars at the exact same time every night. The mystery continues…
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I will miss the charm of this old house.
Our apartment definitely had it’s quirks, but we loved all the little snippets of character, from the thick crown molding to the big windows. It had so much natural light!
I will not miss the uneven floors and wonky ceilings.
Every floor in our apartment has something weird going on. The dining room tilts towards the windows (so if you spill something in the kitchen, you have to chase it downhill), you have to step up to the bathroom (where Garrett hits his head on the door frame) and there are little random raised pieces of floor from the duct work (which I stub my toes on). Even the bedroom has a random drop ceiling. It’s an old house that has been broken up and pieced together over time, so it’s bound to have some weird configurations going on, but there are still so many of them that make us shake our heads. (Why did they do it this way??)
Around this time last year, we were busy moving into our new apartment and we never really had a chance to decorate for Fall. This year I tried to make up for it by decorating a bit, and trying to bring some of the lovely autumn colours into our home.
The quilted table runner is a new project that I am in the process of finishing. A post on that will be up soon!
I swapped out the purple flowers from my milk jug and filled it with faux wheat stalks. The little beeswax pumpkin was a find from last year’s CNE. I love it too much to actually light it!
In the living room, I’ve dressed up the bookcase as a Fall Mantel using a variety of faux pumpkins and gourds, lanterns and a big window frame mirror that Garrett’s parents gave us.
Since taking the photos for that post, I’ve added a few more little details, like a vase full of small pumpkins…
…and a cute little pumpkin candy jar (which doesn’t have any candy in it right now).
The bathroom still looks the same since finishing it in April, but I added a little silver pumpkin I found at Michael’s.
I couldn’t resist getting it, and there were no other rooms that it fit into. Even the bathroom deserves a little festive fall decoration.
I think the twisted vine at the top is my favourite part. Faux pumpkins have come a long way in the last few years. The detailing is amazing.
The dining room table has been a steady rotation of bowls of fruit, piles of work to do, or these glass hurricanes full of my freshly preserved acorns. I’m looking forward to being able to use this again next year.
The table even sported a little Pumpkin Vase Arrangement for a little bit back on Thanksgiving, after we made them at my parents’ house. I loved bringing in all the bright colours.
Of course I’m already starting to think about decorating for the next holiday, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying all the beautiful colours and bounty of this one.
Its been two and a half months since we moved into the new apartment and its come a long way since then. We’ve kept fairly close to the layout we planned, with a few small changes.The biggest thing now is of course all the little things. My goal over the next few months is to get started on all the bits and pieces we want to change about this place.
Our front hall is probably the most neglected area of the apartment. I want to put up a gallery of photos on the right and some functional hooks near the closet. We could also use a fun and colourful mat for when you first walk in.
In the kitchen we already added this little shelf above the sink, but I still have a spice rack to install, a stepstool to paint and a few more little decor touches, like changing this Christmas scene to something else.
In the dining room, I swapped out my old table for this one that I semi-restored (more on that soon). I’ve also found some new chairs for the table that still need to be reupholstered. The mini blinds (unfortunately) have to stay put, but I`m thinking about putting up some kind of window treatment to hide them a bit.
In the corner of the dining room is my little home office. During the holiday we installed opening shelving above the desk, but I still need to find a few more storage options. Its slowly getting there.
I desperately need to work on the decor in the living room. For the past month I just kept it Christmasy, but now with all that stuff is away it looks bland and boring. I need some colour and pattern in there to spruce things up.
On the other side of the living room is my large bookcase. I need to go through ALL the boxes in this room and reorganize them. When the final days of the move got hectic, I just started shoving stuff anywhere I could, so I’m sure they’re lots of little surprises in there (Oh look! My eyeliner pencil sharpener I lost….seriously can’t find it anywhere.)
In the bedroom, I put up a new headboard I snagged, and we’ve since then installed some wall mounted lighting. Next up is some artwork above the bed and new linens.
The bathroom is also in need of some minor work. While installing a toilet roll holder (there wasn`t one), I whacked my head on that towel bar and it fell down. It was already really flimsy and couldn`t even hold one towel without falling down, so it had to go. We`re on the hunt for a new one. I also bought some new towels to add some colour (more on that soon) and we have a fun storage idea that is in the works. It would take much to make this place more functional.
I don`t know what it is about the new year that makes it feel like a fresh start, but I`m just going to go with it. Our place already feels like home, but its those little touches that can really make it feel like our own. Bring on the paint brush and hammer!
I’ve always been a sucker for floor plans. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved looking at the ones that you see in the Saturday newspaper and I even find myself looking them up online from time-to-time. So when we first looked at the new apartment, I knew I was going to want to sketch up the floor plan for this space. It doesn’t take as much time as most people think and in the end you have this great map of your space to play around with. As a friend pointed out, “its a lot easier to move around a couple of pieces of paper than it is to move a couch”. Good point!
I decided to first measure the length and width of every piece of furniture in the apartment, and I mean EVERYTHING: bed, couch, nightstands, headboard, dresser, chairs, bookcases, closet storage units, TV and stand, coffee table, desk, even the fish tank and toaster oven got measured. It took about 15 minutes to do all the measuring and then I just started drawing rough sketches of the shapes to scale on a piece of graph paper, making 1 square = 6″. It was the perfect project to do while catching up on the new TV shows (Anyone else watching “Hart of Dixie”?)
Next up, I took the measurements of all the rooms at the new apartment. This was actually the hardest part with all the nooks and crannies. Thankfully Garrett was there to help me and we got it done fairly quickly. Again, I took the measurements and drew them to scale on a piece of graph paper at 1 square = 6″.
Here are all the rooms that we are working with (you can see the before pictures here!) and as you can see, it is quite a bit bigger than the old apartment. When you first come in the front hall, you go up some wide low steps and then to your left is the kitchen (the brown squares are the new dark wood cabinets). To the right is the bathroom and then straight ahead is the bedroom. On the left is a little entrance way into the living room, which connects to the super sunny and bright dining room and then loops back to the kitchen. I can already tell that Whiskey is going to love running around through the loop.
When we first started planning, we knew roughly what we wanted in each room and then it was just a matter of seeing what kinds of arrangements we could make. We had to take in lots of obstacles (windows, door directions, step ups, baseboard heaters, etc.), but after that it was just moving things around to see what we liked best.
Dining Room & Kitchen
There really isn’t any room to put anything in the kitchen, but the dining room gives us lots of extra kitchen storage options. The exact placement of all of these might change, but we’re planning on having the kitchen cart and microwave/toaster oven stand in there, as well as my computer desk. For now we plan to set up the teak table in there with my two reupholstered chairs, but very soon we’ll be moving my bigger dining room table in there. Its been in storage for two years waiting for a bigger place and now I finally have the space for it.
Bedroom
The bedroom is much tinier than my old place, but I think that we can still make it cozy. Our original idea was to have the bed in the corner behind the door, with a new headboard shelf above, but it felt like it might be cramped and there would be no room for a nightstand on either side. (Doesn’t that round pillow look like an angry face?!?)
One look at these floorplans and my Dad turned it around to look like this. I told you moving paper was easier than furniture! This way we can have the nightstands on each side of the bed and still keep the big headboard. Plus the dresser can tuck in at the other end right by the closet, with room for my electric fireplace too. There is only a little baseboard heater in this room, so we might greatly appreciate the extra heat!
Living Room
Figuring out how to arrange the living room has been the hardest because of a few obstacles. We needed the big bookcase to be on a longer wall, the TV had to be near an outlet, Garrett needed a small office space and nothing could go near the left window because a big baseboard heater is right below it.
This was our original plan with the futon in the middle of the room, which I’m not crazy about because the back is full of 1×4 boards holding the broken slats in. I love this couch, but it just hasn’t held up very well.
Then we decided that we wanted to save up for a new couch anyways, so we started looking at smaller scale sectionals, like the Karlstad from IKEA. If we got the loveseat and chaise combo ($979), then it would fit the space and still offer more seating than the futon.
Then if we get the new couch, it will tuck in there nicely too. Someday I’d like to find a better coffee table too and maybe a nice big area rug.
Here is roughly what we’ve decided on the apartment looking like for now. It will still be cramped, but much cozier too. My car is full to the brim with another load of boxes, which means we’re in the home stretch! Then I can start putting this plan into action. I can’t wait to start setting stuff up!