Our Iqaluit Condo-The Before

When we moved to Iqaluit, Nunavut we never thought we would purchase a house or condo. It's generally hard enough to get an apartment to rent if your work does not provide one. People rent out single rooms in their home for over $1000/month. Not only is there a real shortage of housing available but when a property comes on the market it is generally for sale over the $500,000 mark.

The cost of transporting materials for building is expensive, due to the fact that like everything else it has to be brought by boat (once a year) or flown in. There are only a few construction companies in town, land is leased and new leases are done by lottery. It is not an option for many people to buy. The territorial government, in an effort to get employees to purchase homes and not live in subsidized government apartments, converted several apartment complexes into condos and we were approved to buy one.

Our unit-top two floors

Our unit was at the end-hence the staircase from hell

But we did have a nice view

As you can see buildings are usually nothing special on the outside. Ours was also nothing special on the inside when we first visited it.

View towards the entrance-notice the beautiful flooring we coined "vomit camo", the dark wood grain doors, the "boob lights" and the beige paint everywhere

Look at the great sofa included in our living room/dining room

Upstairs hallway complete with more "vomit camo" and floating "boob lights"

Master bedroom-nothing too offensive

So despite all it's flaws we went ahead and jumped in, confident in the fact that we could somehow replace the ugly part of the flooring and maybe just paint a few walls. It started all so innocently. Tomorrow I'll show you the 'intermediate phase'- if you want a sneak peek of the condo (before we redid the kitchen) take a look at our Apartment Therapy Tour.