The House That Got Away...

I have a confession...we've been looking at other houses this summer.  You see, we love our house deeply (as regular readers will know), but having the two apartments in our house all rented out this summer has made us realize that it is set up perfectly as an income property.

So...we've been looking around.  Looking at duplexes, triplexes, and even fourplexes that have at least one unit large enough for us to live in for several years while renting the others (plus our current house) out.  We've seen quite a few properties, and even had an accepted offer on one, until we found structural issues and backed out.  Still...nothing seemed quite right...until this week, that is.

For the first time, we found a house that we like as much (or maybe even more) than our current house.  The best part is, it too is a duplex with a 3 bedroom unit on the ground floor and a 4 bedroom unit on the second and third floor.  Yup - it's huge!  Either unit would be large enough for our needs with some great rental income from the other unit.  Unfortunately, the sellers underpriced the house, creating a bidding war...a war in which we came in second.  So alas, it won't ever be ours (unless by some small chance the winning offer falls through...)

It didn't surprise us that there was an article in the local paper this weekend talking about how hot Hamilton's housing market has become, attracting investors and residents from Toronto and other cities.

I'm sure you'll agree, this is one beautiful house.  Here are some pictures from the listing.

The ground floor apartment:

Amazing, right?  Just wait until you see the 2nd & 3rd floor apartment:

Rick Pottruff's Search Engine City @ the AGH

For the last few weeks I've been catching glimpses from the street of a new large scale art piece in the entrance foyer of the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  I finally went in for a closer look the other day and I was blown away!

The piece, entitled Search Engine City is by local artist Rick Pottruff.  The drawing was completed on site and is filled with images of industry, traffic, fantastical machines, and more.  Pictures truly don't do the piece justice.  There are so many layers of detail - it's the type of drawing that one could look at a hundred times and still find something new.

It will be on display until August 21st and if you're in the Hamilton area, it is well worth seeing in person!  Here a few more images of the piece to whet your appetite:

City Love: Homewood Avenue

Welcome to Homewood Avenue - one of my all time favourite streets in Hamilton.  The stretch that spans between Queen and Locke is breathtaking and, even if it's slightly out of my way, I almost always find an excuse to walk down it.

It's leafy, filled with beautiful gardens and mature trees that enclose the street like some sort of city-sized cathedral.  The houses are both handsome and whimsical and I think it's their uniqueness that really makes this street stand out.  Along this two block stretch of Homewood there are Victorians, Edwardians, Foursquares, Georgians, and everything in between.

As the sun was setting this evening, I took a few shots of this beautiful Hamilton street:

These two Victorians remind me of something out of a Tim Burton movie, especially the one on the left.  I'd love to see what the rooms in those spires look like from the inside.

Citified Laundry Line

Finally it's springtime in Hamilton and we can start hanging our clothes outside to dry.  We rigged up this clothesline last year along the side of our house.  It was pretty simple to make as we were able to use the metal stair that leads to our second floor as support.  The clothesline is fished through a drilled 2x4 at one end and hooks at the other to make four hanging lines, each spaced about six inches apart.

It's a really compact design with 50 feet of hanging length in a 12 foot space and it makes use of an area that isn't really usable space anyways since it's narrow and under a staircase.  We find that it's just enough room for a full load of laundry and still long enough for queen sized sheets.

Look at that fresh laundry, blowing gloriously in the wind!  In the winter we don't use our dryer either as we hang our laundry on a clothes rack in the basement, but there's nothing quite like laundry dried outside by the sun and the breeze.

With washing in cold water, using Sunlight Green Clean detergent, and hanging our laundry to dry, we're doing our best to reduce the carbon footprint of our laundry.

-kyle

Citified Biking

One of my favourite things about living downtown is being able to bike to work.  My 2 km daily ride is the perfect way to wake up in the morning and an even better way to de-stress after a long day at work. 

I'm sure this will be the first of several bike-related posts.  Today I want to focus on what I've found to be one of the most important aspects of daily bike commuting - having a safe place to lock up.  It's not that I have an expensive bike or anything...actually my bike is pretty crappy.  But, now that my bike serves as my primary means of transportation, it feels like it is worth so much more than simply its monetary value, so knowing it will be there when I leave work is huge.  That's where this place comes in:

 I know what you're thinking...that's a parking garage...for cars.

Yup...there's that giant encircled P...the universal sign for vehicular parking.

Hmmm...what's this?  No bikes and no pedestrians allowed?  Just cars I guess.  But wait?  What's that green sign glimmering in the distance?

Yessssss....a cage with a green P and a bike on it!  Let's ignore the contradiction with that previous sign and revel in the beauty of this cage for bikes.

The door's locked, but good thing I have one of these handy dandy fobs on my key chain.  You can have one too for just $60/year.  Details can be found here.  (and yes, I realize that the form found on this link says it only costs $50/year, but city workers apparently find updating forms each and every year when fees change to be an unnecessary exercise...sigh)

Yes!  We're in and lucky me, my office is less than half a block away.

Oh how I wish this photo was filled with wall to wall bikes, but truthfully, this is as full as I've seen it since I started parking my bike here in January.  With spring finally here, hopefully all those 'fair weather' cyclists will soon be filling all those empty spots.  Still, I'm so glad I live in a city that is at least starting to invest in an infastructure that supports cycling.

We may be a long way from having scenes like this or this in Canada (those crazy Dutch), but with gas prices going no where but up and up...hopefully more people will see that the bicycle is much more than a recreational weekend toy.  Good for your health, good for the environment, good for your wallet...it's a triple win situation.  Who's crazy now?

-Kyle