How an actor and model lives in 500 square feet

Sophie Blumenthal, 29

Actor and model

Where: Wallace-Emerson How big: 500 square feet How much: $326,000

Before she bought her condo, Sophie was renting a space in a loft in the Junction. Her room was actually just two adjacent closets, each about seven feet long and 12 feet deep. Her landlord knocked down a divider wall to combine the two spaces into one, and Sophie was able to wedge in some basic furniture alongside the apartment’s hot water tank. The $460-per-month rent was affordable enough that she was able to save money while studying sculpting at OCAD and working as an art dealer for contemporary galleries.

In 2014, shortly after graduating, Sophie went looking for a home she could own. She browsed about 20 units before zeroing in on this second-storey space in a building near Lansdowne and Bloor. She loved the high ceilings, brick walls and abundance of light that floods in from four south-facing windows—all of which makes the loft seem much more spacious than it actually is.

Sophie, who now works as an actor and model (and drives for Lyft on the side to help pay the bills), leads a super-minimalist life. Her kitchen gets almost no use, because she eats out for every meal, which makes it easy to keep that part of the apartment free of clutter. She makes a hobby of buying and selling vintage furniture, so she regards her decor as temporary, and regularly swaps it out for new items. “Because the unit is so small, everything makes a big impact, whether it’s a piece of furniture or a light fixture,” she says.

All her clothes fit in this wooden armoire. “I maybe own 20 pieces of clothing, total,” she says. The drawing is a self-portrait by New York artist Joshua Abelow. Sophie came across his work when she was an assistant director at Cooper Cole gallery. “It’s one of my favourite things I own,” she says. “It’s romantic, raw and relatable”:

Sophie made the marble side tables herself. They’re inspired by House of Cards. She bought the candle at 100% Silk:

She’s not usually into symmetry, but found it made sense in the bedroom area. When she moved in, she built walls around this space, but she recently took them down and is enjoying the more open-concept vibe:

Though she loves to cook, she finds she goes out for every meal, so she keeps her kitchen bare:

But she still gets some use out of the oven:

Here’s the rest of the living space. The modular sofa is a vintage piece by B&B Italia: