MiKE: new apartment.

So, as rene mentioned, we just signed the lease on our new apartment. It's actually an attic apartment, with probably 1.5 floor height ceiling, and 2 built in loft units, one for the bed, and on for storage. The kitchen and the bathroom is on a separate, raised level. The following pictures are the 'before' shots, before we did our painting and other minor works, like changing the orientation of the bathroom door knob so that it is not possible to lock oneself in (the previous setup had the locking button on the outside(!!)), re-installing a fold-away dining table-let, and generally tightening up loose screws and cleaning up the mess left behind by the previous tenant, who seemed to have been in a hurry, leaving for a long drawn out tour around the world of sorts. So, some of the arrangements will change after we've done our work; we'll post another one then.

Here is the view from the kitchen, which is what you encounter when you enter the apartment; looking to your left, the bed:

And to the right, the storage unit:The ladder you see is very heavy, and curiously misaligned, so that leaning the upper portion on the loft, the feet would not be the same distance away from the loft edge. And yeah. We are keeping that futon, which also doubles as a mattress, so up to 2 people can sleep in relative discomfort (heh heh). Well, don't take this as an invitation, unless you're willing to pay for the privilege.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the apartment is the skylight. We've never had one of these before, always having lived in some apartment with a concrete ceiling, and in tropical singapore, one would hardly want to have the sun come in to the building, unless one had a dichroic material, which would make it prohibitively expensive, but I digress...:

Here is a shot of the kitchen area from the middle of the living area. Isn't the skylight absolutely gorgeous? Right now, at the beginning of summer, the sun is already very bright; I went there this morning to experience a virtual greenhouse (not to mention that the thermostat had been left at 30C accidentally). I think the skylight would be very welcome in winter, letting in precious sun and heat, although I wonder what is going to happen if there is going to be severe snowfall. The skylight is actually somewhat dome shaped, but still I wonder how much snow will collect. One possible downside of this is the likely increased energy loss from the skylight, and we are paying for heat. I hope it is not too bad.

The room has been through several coats of paint. It was almost like doing an archaeological examination, seeing in some corners the older paint layers. We have seen at least white, covered by maroon, covered by blue, covered by the white wash we applied, and then the final colour we chose (which we'll reveal in a later post). On this wall you see a painting framed by skirting panels, a replica of something by Gustav Klimt according to the signature at the bottom of the frame. Near the bottom of the picture you'd see the white that we are applying over the blue:

And in the kitchen, the previous occupant, or the one previous to him, painted a mural which I suppose echoes some famous artwork, and included a checkerboard pattern in black, which took us sooo many layers to completely cover. A few significant things about this new kitchen include the mercifully white worktop; compared to the fugly speckled pattern on our current place, in which anything smaller than 5mm diameter would immediately get lost, this worktop is elegant and easy to keep clean. The counter space is also that much bigger than our current one. Certainly not as big as the kitchens that we have owned, but given how we have learnt to manage with a 1m expanse, this felt good. The counter height is also significantly reduced, so serene now should have less difficulty preparing the odd meal or snack or batch of cookies.

Another shot of the kitchen area, this time to show how dark the previous colour scheme was. It was almost as if the previous users wanted to feel like they were living in a cave; you can see how overexposed the skylight is, and yet I still remain in the shadows:

Overall, after spending about 3-4 days there (painting and cleaning up, not sleeping there yet as the mattress has been ordered, let alone arrived), we noticed a few things - being on Harbord street, and not Spadina Avenue, means that we do not hear much traffic. To top it off, we were on the north facing side of the house, which overlooks the inside, quieter part, so we do not hear traffic at all, besides the odd siren of emergency response vehicles, which one must be in a really desolate place not to hear at all. We are located atop a medical (psychiatric?) practice, and they turn on their heat during office hours. Their hot air heats our floor, made of rather thin (compared to concrete) wood, which heats our apartment; so, the apartment is rather warm even without needing to turn on our heat. That's good. At this point, I suppose many things have yet to be settled, there is some leaky plumbing, and we have not even begun to move; so the best thing to say is, stay tuned...