To most of you, this will make no difference, as we are not even leaving town. Our offer has been accepted and we are moving to the other end of Goffstown, to smaller quarters, all on one level. Not much smaller, actually. I have reasoned that if we wait until we have no choice, we end up in a place where we will have no positive associations, and does not have years of overlearning where things are as our memories fade. This is one hedge against my unsympathetic children moving me to an ice floe with only some seal blubber because I can no longer function in situ. We will hopefully have years of practice and positive experiences instead. My mother and my wife's mother had their last years in familiar places they liked. Tracy's father and my stepfather did not, and it cost them something emotionally, I think.
Similarly, all on one level doesn't matter much at this point. In fact it will reduce the flights of stairs my wife gets to count on her Fitbit. But ten years from now it might matter, and in the interim there might be temporary periods when it matters because of a surgery. It may matter for me as well, as I am a clumsy person. I have almost pitched forward headlong on the basement stairs a few times every year since we moved in in 1987. (I now confess this, having hidden it from my wife for decades.) This can't go on forever, and now it doesn't have to. I can now fall down a few steps onto pavement instead, with hands empty instead of holding trash/laundry/tools.
The charm of the place is minimal outside, but it checks most of our other boxes.
Good luck with your move. The only thing I can recommend from experience with my parents is an ADA compliant bathroom with wheelchair width door and curbless shower. You need an experienced tile man for the curbless shower that will seal the *entire* bathroom floor.
ReplyDeleteGood on you for thinking ahead. In addition to building an auxiliary dwelling unit for our handicapped daughter and her caregiver behind our house, we also made sure this house would let us age in place: a ramp up to the porch, a roll-in shower, no hallways and wider than usual doorways, and close to a major hospital.
ReplyDeleteBuilding the house also took every cent of our retirement monies, so we NEED to age in place. I watch Grand Designs to remind myself that I'm not the only one in misery over escalating building costs, unexpected zone changes, capricious (malicious) county inspectors, ruinous environmental requirements (they didn't even look at the rain garden I built voluntarily) etc etc etc. As much as I appreciate building codes that make buildings safe in an earthquake zone, I despise arbitrary zoning codes that change from year to year such that we need to tear up and do over at huge expense.
So I'm glad you could find what you need without the necessity of building.