houses

[lauradi7dw]

I was with my parents a couple of weeks ago when the whole East Coast got snow. In the case of my parents, the storm apparently parked over their immediate area, and they got 11". I had stocked up on food and the power never went out, but it was hard for the caregivers (and the newspaper person, and the letter carrier) to get in and out of their neighborhood. They are the 2nd oldest house by far in the neighborhood - the rest of the houses are about 20 years old. My parents were the only ones with icicles. Clearly modern insulation is better. I mentioned it to my mother, who said that the windows (from the 1950s, with aluminum frames, with old-style storm windows) should be replaced too, but she thinks they probably won't live there long enough to have it pay for itself in fuel savings. This Wondermark cartoon is a pretty good summary (although my parents have a space heater on all day in the part of the house in which they watch TV, and the furnace chugs most of the time as well).

http://wondermark.com/c1373/

I often wonder whether we should have pushed to have them move to an assisted living place, with a more up-to-date building and repair people on call. In many ways, they are more comfortable emotionally in their house, and it is pretty well set up for accessibility, but my mother feels stressed about anything that needs work or even scheduled maintenance.

We watch this, and wonder about our future. Our house is the opposite of accessible - porch steps, narrow doors, stairs to the bedrooms. I had grab bars installed in our bathtub/shower, but that's it. Sooner or later, we may need more flatness and wideness. It might be *much* sooner if my father dies first, and my mother decides to move in with us. That is just a fleeting possibility (she'd probably do the assisted living thing in her area instead), but it would require either having us move or do extensive changes to the house. We've idly been thinking of adding a bedroom and accessible bathroom to the house. Arthur wanted to change the location of the garage, as well. It's currently at the back of our lot, necessitating a LOT of snow shoveling. If we reconfigured things, maybe we could hire a plow service when we get old. Right now, there is no place for the plow piles to go. After looking in the yard, trying to imagine the dimensions of the additions, I asked where the ramp would go. Arthur was confused. I pointed out that for the new bedroom to be on the same level as the kitchen, it would have to be the same distance above the ground, so we'd need a new entrance and a ramp. He hadn't thought of that. We have been talking about accessibility for months, but the idea of actually having a ramp into the house somewhere was not on his mind. Ideally it would be covered (?) so that one wouldn't worry about slipping on ice in the winter. When the Lexington PO first installed a ramp, they blocked it off the whole first winter for fear of people slipping on it. I suppose people with walkers or wheelchairs were supposed to buy their stamps online... I think they came up with some solution eventually. Probably lots of salt.
We have not talked to an architect. I half-jokingly said that maybe we should first talk to a house therapist (I made up that specialty), to really refine what we think would be the way we want to live, before we go through all that.
When we bought the house in 1988, the sellers had also considered adding on, to the extent that they had an architect's model of the future house, but they decided they didn't want to cope with construction, and just bought a bigger house instead. I am resistant to that option - I want to stay in our house - but maybe my fictional house therapist could help me figure out why.

Comments

[negothick]

I read this with great interest, since we're not far apart in age, yet I already consider myself to have "gotten old." I inherited my house some 20 years ago, and the only age-in-place reno I did immediately was to change a powder room into a second bathroom with a walk-in tub. Best investment I ever made. My parents designed and built this single-floor house in the 50s, when they were only in their 30s, but my mother hated stairs. She insisted on a main-floor laundry room--unheard of at the time. I bless her foresight every day. There are two steps from the garage or front door (with good railings), fine for everything except wheelchairs. And I've always paid for snow-shoveling. Hoping to remain here a long time. Hope you can do the same. It's all money well-spent.

[miraclaire]

The architect we talked to before reconfiguring the back of our house joked that she was really more of a house therapist... she's phenomenal and I'd be happy to pass along her information if/when you want it.