-I sound like I have a lot of friends
that help me build stuff,
but it's really great having carpenter friends.
Hi. My name's Robin. And welcome to my sweet digs.
Come on in.
♪♪
I live in Toronto, Canada.
I live alone, and I have two floors,
and I pay $1,945 in rent a month.
♪♪
So, I live in Trinity-Bellwoods.
It's a pretty popular area of the city.
The park is two seconds from here.
All my friends kind of live around here,
so it's good for going on walks.
It's a great area.
I feel super lucky being around here.
So, I live in a duplex.
I have the main floor and the basement and the backyard.
On the main floor, I have my office.
I've got my living room and my kitchen.
And then the basement is the laundry room,
my bathroom, and my bedroom.
So, I would describe my home style --
my friends always make fun of me that I have a term for it --
California casual, for sure.
It's very just, like, airy and light.
♪♪
The first part of my place is my living room.
A lot of this stuff is stuff I either found
or got really cheap.
I won this table in an Instagram giveaway,
which is kind of crazy,
and I broke it the week I got it.
And then I had to, like, glue it back together,
and I put this gold kind of paint in
to make it look kind of more custom.
So it's an interesting piece now
and a little different than it was when it started.
So, my dad actually built me that console,
and that chair, I got like three years ago for $10.
During COVID, I did a lot of kind of polymer claymaking.
So I made this and made a lot of the clay stuff around my place.
I love curating a space,
but I also love having the life and personality of myself
coming through in the things that I've made
and kind of collected and created over the years.
♪♪
The next space is my office,
which is one of my absolute favorite rooms in the house.
Over here is my bookshelf.
I got my master's in English, so I love to read.
My friend actually built me this.
It was built for me as a way to display
all my stuff for my tarot readings.
Like so many millennials, my job is not just one.
The job that pays the bills --
I'm a props person in the film industry.
I also do tarot readings, and it's been such a powerful way
for me to connect with people and help them
and also learn such an incredible practice.
I wanted this space to be really relaxing
for clients when they come, when I give them readings.
So it has all my crystals, my incense, my cards,
and really kind of relaxing,
calming colors and objects displayed here.
This is my desk. I do a lot of work over here.
I painted the wall a dark blue
because I really wanted to add a bit more character.
So, I built this shelf with one of my friends.
It's really lucky, having really handy friends
to be able to help you with all your crazy visions you have.
But I wanted to display some of my plants
'cause there wasn't a lot of room for them around.
And I really think it adds a lot more life into this room
and into this space.
♪♪
So, this bar cart is actually a cabinet
that I did a hack to.
So, again, one of my friends cut this circle
and I put caning material inside of it
to kind of add a more boho, fun look to it.
And inside of it is all of my kind of more fun,
silly kind of stuff that I have, and it has all my alcohol.
♪♪
My landlord, who's great, didn't actually want me to do
a lot of changes to the kitchen at all.
So everything here is completely removable.
So, this counter is actually just a piece of plywood
that I put over top of the existing counter.
It's kind of like a giant cutting board
that I can easily remove.
It's not attached to anything
but adds so much lightness to it,
'cause before it was a black counter.
And then, over here I took the front cupboards
off of the cabinets.
I put contact paper down, painted it white,
and then styled the cabinet so it looked a lot lighter
and kind of had that airy feel to this space
and really opened the place up a lot more.
♪♪
It's really fun kind of flexing your creativity
within a rental space.
One of my friends put those shelves in.
It's where I can store my cookbooks.
I do a lot of canning 'cause I garden in the summer.
I have this hydroponic growing system
that I'm able to kind of get my basil from, kale,
and other vegetables.
♪♪
Up here is another really awesome kind of DIY
I was able to do that was super easy.
And it's where I actually do
a lot of my flower and herb drying.
♪♪
The biggest aspect of my life that influences my home
is my connection to nature.
Being outside and being connected to nature
is such a powerful and important part of my life.
So I've really wanted to translate
having a very natural and organic home, as well.
♪♪
So, through this door is my outdoor space.
I did a lot to my backyard.
It's really nice to have somewhere to go to outdoors.
So, the next space is downstairs,
and that's where my bedroom, my bathroom, and my closet is.
So let's go down there.
♪♪
Basements can be really dark and sort of dreary
and, like, not the funnest place to hang out.
So I really wanted to create this space to feel really cozy.
My friend actually built me this puzzle board
that lives forever on my bed.
I have my projector set up right in front of my bed.
I don't love having a TV within a living space.
I liked using that space to talk to people and connect
or read or be disconnected from technology.
So my projector is in my bedroom,
so it's a little more of an intimate thing
and not as much a social thing.
The bathroom, when I first moved in,
was white and kind of boring,
so I decided I wanted to paint it pink.
I switched out the mirror here.
I painted the curtain rod and did a lot of kind of painting
to make this feel a lot more fun.
My landlord actually found this old cooler,
and I think it's a really fun feature.
I couldn't, obviously, get real plans.
So this is a fake plant, and there's eucalyptus.
So, I really wanted this to feel comfy and spa-like
and just really warm.
♪♪
So, this is my closet that I designed myself.
It's IKEA.
And I really needed a space that I could store all of my clothes,
'cause I have a lot of clothes.
So here's all my jackets,
all my pants, my shirts, my dresses.
And then in here, which was my old closet,
is now my shoe closet.
So my friend, he took out what existed here before
and built me this shoe closet.
One of my most sentimental,
most favorite things I have in my house
is this guitar that my dad actually built for me.
I love it so much.
I've been playing music since I was a kid,
so it's really awesome
to have something that my dad built for me in my space.
♪♪
So, this area over here is really cozy.
I do a lot of reading in this chair here.
And I painted this arch just on a piece of plywood myself.
I love arches.
I have them kind of all over my house.
I actually just recently got bedside tables
for literally the first time in my life, and it's awesome.
Another super impulsive kind of DIY I did during COVID
was painting my stairwell
with all these kind of prints behind it.
It was really hard, actually,
getting behind there and painting it all.
But the results were really, really great,
and I'm so happy how it turned out.
So, the way I laid out my space is actually quite different
than the people who lived here before me.
Because I work in film and can work really crazy hours --
often we'll be shooting all night --
I wanted to have my bedroom in the basement
so that no matter what time I come home, it's still dark
and I'm still able to sleep.
So I kind of inverted
the way a lot of people had set up this place before me.
So, my ex actually found the home about five years ago.
I was still in grad school
and was like, "I cannot afford to live on my own,"
but the place was so special,
and I felt like it could do so much.
Reclaiming this space was at first quite challenging
'cause, you know, you have memories
with a person in this space and you created a home together.
I kept a lot of the stuff,
but I also was just able to bring new life into the space
and allowing myself to get creative
and do art and paint things
and really, like, let go emotionally within my space
and create it as a reflection of me
and who I am at this point in my life.
♪♪
Thanks so much for checking out my sweet digs.
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