The Condo Tour: CTV’s Ann Luu at Home

Inside the weather anchor’s homey Olympic Village loft.

After bouncing around the Lower Mainland for more than a decade, Ann Luu was starting to feel like the protagonist in a familiar children’s tale. The bachelor pad in English Bay was too small, the Surrey townhouse too big, and the half dozen other condos and apartments in between never felt “just right.” Until last year, that is, when the CTV weather anchor found the Olympic Village loft she now shares with husband Mike Rumsby and their beloved Boston terriers, Nitro and Ramsay.

Bathed in natural light from the sky-high windows and hugged by a wraparound patio that nearly doubles the floor space, the condo had the couple smitten from the start. But the plain white walls, tan cabinets and laminate floors screamed for a makeover. “It was really drab,” says Luu. Personality came in the form of a brick feature wall, a nod to the industrial history of the neighbourhood, and greenery in every corner—even adorning the bathroom walls—to erase any sense of separation between inside and out. “We never close our blinds,” Luu says. Meanwhile, a carefully curated collection of art reflects Luu’s family history, as well as the couple’s travels, both near and far. Whimsical touches, like a hanging chair, carve cozy nooks out of the open-concept space—irresistible for human and animal occupants alike. It all adds up to the forever home that has eluded Luu for so long. “The ongoing joke is, ‘When are we going to move from this?’ and I always say, ‘Mike can move whenever he wants.’”

Swing Low After plans for a spiral staircase stalled (they would have had to close the street and get a permit to lift it in), the hanging chair animated a space that otherwise might have been left for dead.

Creature Comforts Textured surfaces like the leather couch and a tree-stump table give the loft a rustic West Coast feel, made even more local by the hanging bus roll, a remnant of Vancouver’s transit history—and a former commuting route for Luu.

Mellow Yellow Marigold lacquer cabinets and matching bar chairs add a warm burst of citrus to a monochromatic kitchen.

Wild Thing “We’ve always killed plants because we’ve never had enough light; finally in this space we kind of just had to have them,” says Luu, who took inspiration from her newly acquired green thumb to accent the guest bathroom.

Home and Away The map in her bedroom (opposite, right) peels away to mark each country visited, and Luu has big plans for it. “My goal is to have a picture gallery of where we’ve been around that map,” she says. “We love travelling and want to do more of it.”

Family Ties A family photo taken shortly after arriving in Canada from Vietnam (find Luu on the far left, in blue) sits next to souvenirs from a family trip to China—where her parents were born—in 2009.