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As if getting a new job, getting married, a big-ass TV and a PS3 weren’t enough to change my life. Last week Simone and I bought a house over on the east side of Toronto.

It’s a five minute walk north of the Danforth between Donlands and Greenwood. It’s a pretty good neighbourhood. For some reason, it didn’t rise in price as quickly as other parts of Toronto. I think it might have something to do with the fact that it’s never gone downhill. Such a thing would result in a “gentrification”, and a subsequent rise in prices coming from a “trendy” label. It’s not uncommon for some of the houses in the area to be owned by the same person or family for many decades. Once place we looked at had the same owner for nearly 60 years. A good, steady neighbourhood I figure has kept the prices reasonable and Simone and I were able to find a place that we liked.

 This is the third place we bid on, and we were willing to go a bit further in the price because there’s really no work needed before moving in. There’s no issues with the place, and further than that there’s no indication that there are any surprises to be had.

It’s a bungalow in an older area, but there are a lot of houses that have been upgraded with a second floor. A good indication that the house is built well. There are a lot of upgrades, but unlike many of the houses we’ve seen before this there’s no indication that any of the work was the job of someone who bought the house, renovated and flipped it. All of the work is top-notch, and there’s no sign of cut corners. 

Things got a bit slow at work this week and I’ve already started figuring out the network. There will be a WLAN upstairs, and a gigabit switch downstairs for the server and PS3. They can be easily connected by a cable that has already been hooked up between the den upstairs and a wall outlet downstairs.

Even though the logistics are done, there’s still a lot to do. The nice thing about this house is that it’s all stuff that we want to do to make the house “ours”. There’s no real work that needs to be done just to bring the place up to a “livable” status.

Simone’s making her plans for the garden out back. There’s not as much room as some other places we’ve looked at, but it’s decent. And I get the feeling that given several acres of land Simone could still fill it up so she’ll just have to do with what plot of dirt she is given. As long as I have a barbeque back there, I’ll be happy.