The day after returning from the conference I started the first day of my new job. It was a bit crazy but I wanted to jump right in because I was absolutely broke! You won’t guess where I got a new job! Philip Beesley Architect! That’s right, I went back… yet again (this is the third time). This time though it is for an entirely different role. Philip Beesley is partnering with an Austrian architect, Rolf Siefert who is working on a few building projects in Toronto. The main one that is well underway is a renovation and addition to an old industrial building in Liberty Village. The building has a lot of character and it has been challenging and fun to work on! I have been a few times on site and felt like, yes, this is what I’m supposed to be doing! Remind me.. why did it take so long to get to this point? I am now in the intern architect program and have started logging my hours to become a certified, full-fledged architect! Only two-ish more years to go (that is if I am ultra efficient)!
Another fun moment was getting my bound theses from the school! What? I wrote a one inch thick book? Okay, that must mean I can do anything I put my mind to (with God’s strength and direction)!
Because I was working in the West end, I had a real desire to move back there and be closer to my job. Where I was renting a room from John-Paul in the East end it took me an hour to get to and from work and I felt distant from the architecture community. I had previously lived for a year in little Portugal and eight months in the Junction triangle and so the area already felt like home. My friend Jen from Grace Toronto knew that I was looking for a place and wanted to introduce me to a girl from our church named Susan who was looking in the same area. It seemed like we would get along great and so we started looking for a place together. It was an exhausting process but we found a place a few weeks later! It’s the biggest place I’ve ever had! Sometimes I feel like it is more space then I need, but then I think of how nice it is to host people and work on crafty projects :P. The apartment is in the Junction neighbourhood and is the second and third floors of a house. The kitchen, dining, and living rooms are on the main floor and the bedrooms are on the upper floor. The apartment is a perfect twenty minute walk away from my work and a skip and a jump from High Park! Because the apartment is so spacious I think it is going to take a while for us to get it looking the way we want, but I have managed to make my room into a welcoming, gezellig space.
I might save photos of the living areas for another day when I am more proud of what they look like! For now though, here is a project that I did last weekend. Susan has a wicked road bike that she keeps inside and we were trying to think of a cool place to put it. We have a very generous stairway and so I thought it would be cool to hang it off the wall there. I went into a bike shop looking for wall hooks and found out that they are expensive, but then I was inspired by bikes that were on display that were sitting on a sloped rack and held from behind with a single hook. I realised that this would work in our entry on a small little sloped area that runs beside the stairs and would only cost me a few dollars! The result is that when you enter our apartment, you feel like you are about to be run down by a bike! I put two hooks in so that my future nice bike (one day…) will also have a home…. :P There will be many more house projects yet to come!
Life Section 
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