This renter glammed up her one-bedroom with classic French farmhouse-style decor

The renter: Camille Lalonde, a flight attendant
The undertaking: A one-bedroom house in Forest Hill
DIY finances: $500.

Camille discovered her house close to Casa Loma in 2012. She had simply moved to the town from Montreal together with her buddy Sarah to pursue a profession as a flight attendant. “Even on the time, we thought the costs in Toronto had been loopy, so we determined to share a one-bedroom,” she says. When she noticed the attractive authentic cast-iron sink in a century-old unit in Forest Hill, she knew she needed to dwell there.

Camille took the bed room whereas Sarah took the lounge, splitting the $1,000 hire evenly. When Sarah moved out two years later, Camille determined to maintain the place for herself; she couldn’t half with the house’s old-world character, like its French doorways and cast-iron radiators. The choice paid off financially too: over the previous 11 years, her hire has elevated by solely $100.

As a flight attendant, Camille was hardly ever residence. Initially, she handled the house kind of like a dormitory. “I used to be travelling for work and through all my time without work, so I didn’t care what the place regarded like,” she says. “It was crammed with outdated IKEA furnishings. I barely up to date something.” However, when the pandemic grounded all flights, she couldn’t assist however discover that the place was falling aside round her.

In 2020, Camille took on her first residence enchancment undertaking: reworking an ungainly built-in ironing board within the kitchen right into a farmhouse-style espresso nook. The board was decrepit and awkwardly sized, stretching all the best way to the oven when totally prolonged. “It was a fireplace hazard,” says Camille, who sawed the board in half and bought two staircase poles from House Depot for $3 every, drilling them into the board to create a everlasting desk for her Nespresso machine.

Subsequent, she eliminated the door cowl from its hinges and turned the lifeless area into open shelving utilizing lumber from House {Hardware}. After measuring and slicing the wooden to suit, she connected the planks to the wall by repurposing moulding strips from House Depot (a way she’d discovered from her dad when he added cabinets to her corridor closet years earlier). Camille discovered the wine storage rack sitting beneath the desk through the Stooping Toronto Instagram account, which chronicles covetable curbside finds throughout the town. She picked it up outdoors a restaurant on St. Clair West that was shuttering.

Not lengthy afterward, one of many kitchen cupboards beneath her sink caved in. When Camille alerted the owner, he agreed to repair it however stated it could require renovating all the kitchen. Loath to surrender her beloved cast-iron sink for one thing extra generic, she instructed him she would repair it herself if he agreed to cowl the fee ($100). She ripped out the damaged drawer, purchased wooden so as to add new cabinets utilizing the identical method because the espresso bar, and coated it up with a curtain sourced from Worth Village, which provides a contact of European aptitude to the area.

Camille inherited her knack for residence enchancment from her household, which she describes as being “very DIY.” Her grandfather ran a reupholstering firm in Montreal, and rising up, she took yearly journeys together with her household to supply antiques in Maine. In consequence, she developed a love for each discount searching and quaint design. “I like to combine eclectic farm type with retro items,” she says, pointing to the inexperienced floral chair from the Nineteen Sixties and two wood chairs in her kitchen, all salvaged from the facet of the highway. Lots of the objects within the house—such because the hanging egg chair in her lounge—are heirloom items handed on from members of the family.  

At one level, water injury within the toilet left an unpleasant stain on the wall. It nonetheless confirmed by way of a number of contemporary coats of paint, so Camille determined to cowl the wall with a sublime black-and-white print peel-and-stick wallpaper from the net retailer Wallpops ($80). “I don’t have the correct to destroy a wall, so I figured wallpaper is an efficient option to disguise defects,” she says. “Plus I like that I can take the reusable paper with me once I go away.” She used leftover paper to create an identical backsplash space behind the sink in her kitchen. “As a result of it’s vinyl, water can hit it on a regular basis and there’s no injury,” she says.

Her last repair was the toilet’s authentic marble flooring tiles, which had been cracking and uneven when she moved in and had gotten worse over time. “I stored on hurting my toes,” says Camille. She ordered stick-on vinyl flooring tiles for $100 to enhance their look and forestall any future accidents. She measured every little thing exactly and used an Exacto knife to chop them so they’d match round the bathroom. “I caulked round it to cover the imperfections,” she says.

Not like many renters, Camille is blissful to tackle formidable tasks even when they don’t end up trying good. You possibly can nonetheless see the place the water bubble was on the toilet wall behind the vinyl wallpaper, and the cabinets by the espresso bar are removed from flawless. “However I feel that’s the fantastic thing about it,” she says. “Nothing is ever good.”

Camille felt so keen about her DIY upgrades that she’s contemplating a profession change. She enrolled part-time within the inside design program at LaSalle School final yr and hopes to tackle design purchasers within the close to future. Whereas she doesn’t plan on residing within the house without end—“It’s not proper for 2 individuals,” she says, “so if I ever have a companion I feel I should transfer”—she’s thrilled to name it residence for now.