This blogger and thrifter, "Mama Brooke", lives in a small apartment in an old brick house in Toronto. In fact, her space on the second floor, was originally just the three bedrooms and a bathroom for the house. Now, it's a snug living room, kitchen, bedroom and bath.
It's like a treehouse, decorated in her own flea market, thrifted, European cottage style.
For some reason, I had trouble snatching stills from the video to show, but to watch her video tour, you can search: Elevate Your Apartment-- on a dime design.
I grabbed a few images from her garden video too-- How to Elevate Your Garden on a Dime, also easily searchable.
What a nifty focal point she found for her little sitting room-- an imposing highboy, with those original amazing finials! She painted it chalky black, for drama and to suit her style.
Right ajacent is the charming kitchen, with its old brick wall. The tiny round table is her dining table. The black door leads first to a small, adorable pantry, and then to her terrace. Can't see the working side of the kitchen in this photo.
This little vintage table next to that brick wall stores some of her dishes-- she says she often uses luncheon plates to eat off of-- good diet tip!
The kitchen is little, unrenovated, but so cute, and she cooks up a storm in it.
I was so taken with her bathroom. She said she renovated it for about $5000 a couple of years ago. That wonderful box paneling on the wall-- that's 4 Ikea doors, "seconds", that she got for $40 odd, and now they look like vintage paneling. I think the black ceiling and pendant light are perfect in here. The high quality pendant was a Facebook Marketplace find.
The video is worth watching for the bathroom alone. She wanted the bathroom to have an 'old school' feeling like the house, so chose marble floor tiles in a handsome cross hatch pattern. Rug is pretty in here.
She showed a little of the bedroom, but says it's a work in progress. A great idea for storage in there, was her adaptation of a glass-fronted vintage curio cabinet-- she's using one as a "sweater closet", to tame her prized overflow sweater collection!
Good idea when storage and closets are tight.
You step out of her kitchen into this charming little wood terrace with tree-top views of the neighborhood. I love the way she's made use of every square inch. She's a devoted gardener, and has tucked in an iron chaise with striped cushion for relaxing too.
This is one of two iron chairs she has for entertaining up here.
Every house, whatever the size, done up economically and with cleverness, has so many ideas to offer.
Bonus, if you go to her site. There's a video with a recipe for 'sticky toffy pudding'! An old English dessert she made for Canadian Thanksgiving. I might make it for our Thanksgiving, yum, since I love dates and especially, caramel sauce.
Don't you think that HGTV could benefit from a few shows featuring non-cookie cutter type dwellings like this? They used to, and it was so much more interesting.