Inside a three-storey Annex condo brimming with taxidermy and oddball art

Walking into Colin Hutzan and Brian Nguyen’s Annex apartment feels like entering a musty, forgotten antique shop that also happens to be a contemporary art gallery. Everywhere you look, your eyes land on improbable yet fantastical objects, like a gumball machine filled with pills, an 18-inch-long wooden spider and a stuffed toucan wearing a bowler hat.

Hutzan, a VP of customer experience at a tech company, and Nguyen, a sales manager, bought their Wunderkammer-esque 900-square-foot two-bedroom condo in 2022, after living in a historic loft at College and Dufferin stuffed with taxidermy for 11 years.

Their new living quarters are the polar opposite of their previous arrangement, which featured a skylight but no actual windows. “I think it was illegal,” says Nguyen. “To get fresh air or sunshine, we’d have to leave the house,” says Hutzan. In contrast, their new digs boast floor-to-ceiling windows—covered by “Hermes orange” shades—and a total of three balconies, one for each floor.

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The two bona fide eccentrics have managed to create an eclectic paradise that blends Hutzan’s macabre tastes with Nguyen’s more colourful, cartoonish style. The light-filled space functions as a greenhouse, housing a lush jungle of plants tended to by Nguyen, a prolific gardener, interspersed with Hutzan’s formidable collection of taxidermy. “He likes dead things; I like living things,” says Nguyen.

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The couple often spends evenings watching the Food Network, supervised by a gigantic taxidermy bison head perched above the wall-mounted TV. The majestic ungulate is joined by several companions: a flamingo named Rosario (after the maid on Will & Grace), several owls, a puffin and the aforementioned toucan.

Hutzan has been fascinated by taxidermy since he was a child growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, where his parents frequently took him to a taxidermy-themed restaurant across the border in Michigan called Antlers. “I am attracted to things that are polarizing,” explains Hutzan. “Whether it’s positive or negative, I just think things are more interesting if they’re evoking strong emotions.”

Hutzan’s macabre sensibilities extend to his closet, which includes a collection of more than 50 garments from the “Lord of Darkness,” American fashion designer Rick Owens. His most prized possessions are several pairs of platform boots by Owens. Hutzan is drawn to the outlandish elements of the designs, such as a mauve sweatshirt with exaggerated pointy shoulders or a leather hat resembling an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s headdress. For him, fashion is about expressing freedom and exploring creativity. “I don’t get dressed thinking, Who can I freak out today?" he says. “It’s more about, How would I dress if I truly didn’t care how others would react?"

To accommodate the couple’s shared love of clothing, they converted the primary bedroom into a dressing room, which houses not just their wardrobes but all manner of objects, including Nguyen’s 25-pair eyeglasses collection and a glass-encased pigeon skeleton that Hutzan found on Bunz Trading Zone. One of the strange and most fantastical items on display is a pair of wearable Maleficent-inspired leather horns from Shop Untitled. The last time he donned them, Hutzan had to lower the seat in his car so he could fit inside.

Hutzan and Nguyen kept the smaller bedroom as their sleeping quarters, where they have a full-size Yucca plant that reaches all the way to the ceiling. It’s so large that they had to trim the top off to get it inside; after two years, it has started growing across the ceiling. They both work from home, and Nguyen’s desk in the bedroom is made from plywood and brackets salvaged by Hutzan from the garbage of their last apartment. A chain mail piece Hutzan bought off Kijiji adorns the wall.

Upstairs on the top floor is a laundry room as well as a balcony space where they host barbecues in the summer. Between each floor, the stairwell serves as an impromptu gallery displaying their vast accumulation of freaky objects, including a functioning traffic light from auction website Maxsold, a bell from nearby antique shop Panoply on Dupont, and metal sculptures Hutzan salvaged from the trash and spray-painted vibrant colours.

Far overhead, a stuffed wolverine sits on a shelf near the stairwell ceiling. Below it are motorcycle helmets with spikes and horns, window-display props left over from Nguyen’s old job at Diesel. Hutzan installed everything himself, using a telescopic ladder precariously balanced on the stairs.

While both Hutzan and Nguyen work in tech, most of their friends are creatives, like photographers and stylists. Much of the art they own is sentimental or personal in some way. In a photo print of RuPaul’s Drag Race queen Willem taken by Matt Barnes that hangs above the couch, Hutzan can be spotted eating a hot dog out of Willem’s hand. Another Barnes photo hanging in the stairwell depicts an angel rising from the depths of hell, where Hutzan can be spotted modelling as one of the demons.

Of all the rooms, the one they spend the most time in is the kitchen. They renovated the formerly dark and dreary space by adding quirky blue, yellow and orange backsplash tiles that resemble candy corn and ripping out cabinets to create open shelving for easy access to ingredients. This summer, they plan to add a pergola to the upstairs balcony to level up their hosting game and install blue subway tiles to brighten up the laundry room walls. After two years in the space, Hutzan and Nguyen have managed to create an unflinchingly unique home that serves as a shrine to nonconformity.