Toronto’s tiny cube house sells again for $475,000

A 27-year-old graphic designer has paid $475,000 for the ultimate artistic statement — with help from mom and dad.

Samantha Turnbull was one of six bidders who’d offered over the $349,000 asking price for the unusual 800-square-foot Coxwell Ave. house on stilts. But she thought she’d been beaten out by a couple with two young children based on vision — the architect/interior design duo had sketched out plans to expand the house — rather than money.

In the end, however, the buck stopped with Turnbull.

That deal fell through this week and she was offered a second chance at her dream home — three 16-by-16 floors of eco-friendly heated concrete slab on busy Coxwell Ave. carefully crafted by Toronto architect Rohan Walters.

“You are not going to find that house again,” Turnbull said in a telephone interview Thursday, ecstatic at the end of a year-long search for a home different from all others. “It’s not your cookie-cutter house and that’s exactly why I love it.”

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Turnbull said her parents, who live in a farmhouse north of the city, are “ecstatic” about her first house. Her father, a landscape architect, has big plans to transform the 23-by-205-foot lot just north of Queen St.

“I’m lucky to have awesome parents who helped me with the downpayment,” Turnbull said.

The bold, weathered, exterior is going to get a paint job: Turnbull has some colours in mind and has designed murals in the past.

She plans to add at least one closet — there are currently none — and design a novel island on wheels that will do double-duty in the kitchen which now has just a counter and sink but no cupboards. The island will be easily rolled out of the way when she wants to have a dinner party or throw open the glass-and-steel garage door that fills much of the south wall.

“Every little nook has been thought about in the house. There is so much design and quirkiness. I’m just looking forward to being in a really creative environment because that’s who I am.”

And as for the parking pad which sits underneath the raised house?

Turns out that Turnbull has the ideal car — a silver Volkswagen Beetle — which will fit in just perfectly.