Home Sweet Home

I was planning to hold off on posting any apartment pictures until after we were done painting and decorating. However, judging from the amount of progress we’ve made since the first week we moved in (none!) I’ll never ever post any pictures if I don’t do it now. Luckily when Gabby went home in December she took a bunch of pictures to show her family, so I have some photographic evidence of the apartment only 2 weeks after we moved in.

This is my bedroom. Gary is supposed to build me a closet sometime in the new year, but for now I have clothes hanging on this Ikea rack Hollie and I used to use for Ainslie Wood Co. Two of my favorite Oh My Cavalier prints are hanging between the windows, and sitting against the window sill. Along the window sill is some of my favorite milk glass pieces, small jewelry boxes I have accumulated, a gift-shop Alcatraz mug that my friend Erica mailed me (along with fake gold from the Yukon!), a matryoshka doll I’ve had since I was a child, and a pair of vintage frames I keep meaning to get real lenses put in.
To the left is the original staircase from the apartment. The stairs lead up to my bedroom, and we begged to keep the original railing. Painting these stairs is one of the first projects on our to-do list.
To the right is another shot of my bedroom. This is where the closet was supposed to go, but now I love having my bed in this alcove so much I don’t know what to do. Above my bed is a poster of Sable Island, “Graveyard of the Atlantic”. I bought that poster about 5 years ago when I lived in Halifax, and I’ve been carrying it with me ever since. Sable Island seems like a magical wonderland to me, and I’m hoping that having this poster above my bed means lots of dreams about wild ponies.
The quilt on my bed was a kijiji find that I drove to Kitchener to pick up. I have no idea why someone would sell a quilt their grandmother made on kijiji, but I was happy to find it. The green floral blanket was for extra warmth, and belonged to my mother when I was little. The cedar chest was my grandmothers, and the folded up quilt on top of it came from an antique market I visited. The red circle thing is Pepper’s toy. This is the view looking down from my bedroom doorway. The pink & yellow cupboards came like that, and we are definitely planning to repaint them. For now they are the perfect place to display my milk glass collection. The ceiling beams are all original, and I am so so happy that they were preserved. Pepper is pretty much always hovering somewhere near my feet.
This is the view from the kitchen, looking into the living room. How good are those windows? In the corner is my aluminum Christmas tree that we just took down yesterday. Nothing had really been hung on the walls yet except for the framed Audubon print. The couch is a hand-me-down from Hollie, the side tables were both found/thrifted, the green & blue chair at the back was originally meant for the store when we first opened, and the credenza was a $20 steal 4 years ago. The cat is Atticus.
This guy is Boo, and he’s really shy. Here’s a closeup of my favorite chair, and another one of the Christmas tree.
This is another series of shots of the same room, but this time from the living room looking towards the kitchen. On the coffee table is an Audubon bird print book. I can’t get enough of them. The floors are maple. The two breakfast stools you see are the culmination of 4 years of searching for one’s similar to Victoria’s. Turns out they are THE EXACT SAME. I plan to paint them white, and recover them in Mojave Fabric from Proud Mary. The blue chair is another thrifted find, and the mint green table is actually a desk belonging to the former resident of this apartment. Above it, we’ve hung a series of cat match boxes that our dear friend Erica brought me back from Portugal.

And that’s that. I didn’t post any pictures of the bathroom or Gabby’s bedroom because at the time these were taken both were a work in progress. We have tons to do still, and we haven’t really started any of it. Eventually, right?