Well, not new-new, but new to us. As Bob's disease has progressed, the need to relocate to a single story home has become an imperative and I've been getting desperate. Don't have the time, unfortunately, to wait for the perfect home. I've been looking for months and came close to buying two other homes. In fact, one I would have made an offer on but learned that an offer had been accepted the night before. The second had a lot of good things about it but some strong negatives too, the kind that make you go "well that's not good, but I can live with it". Like a two year old 2300 sf house with no laundry room, just a washer and dryer plunked in a hallway between the kitchen and a guest BR and BA? Oh, and though that one offered total main floor living which we have to have, there were two BRs on the second story. Okay because Bob would never have to go up there, but not ideal.
Then this past weekend I learned of a house in my own neighborhood about to go on the market and owned by people I know from the Wine Club I used to manage, but I'd never been in it. Took a tour Sunday morning and made an offer 30 minutes in, or was it only 25. I'm going to lose my beach but it's on a lake so we have a view and more importantly, we won't have to stare at the back of someone else's fence which is best part of any view IMO. The owner/wife was confined to a wheelchair at the time they were designing the home so it's disabled-friendly in all the important ways. It was easy to instantly assess that it has everything we need in 1700 sf (half the space we have now) and nothing I hate. Especially compared to the many-more concessions I was going to have to make in any other home I considered.
Except the size of the kitchen. It's one corner of a large great room, adequate for most people but downright skimpy for me. I actually told myself to suck it up "because Jeff Grossman makes do with something even smaller". I'll have to live with appliances on the counter, something I intensely dislike. But that aside, there IS room for my 8 person 1920 Italian art deco dining table. And I can add some cabinetry on the dining room wall to make more storage.
Other good things: it has a real laundry room with a sink, the master bath has a wide walk-in shower with room for a shower chair, and surprisingly for a house this small there's a 3 car garage, one bay of which the current owner turned into a work room. You always need a place to fix stuff, right? I know we do, and my hot little golf cart will go in there too. Also, the new house is on a small lake so we will have the lake view and migrating water fowl by day and at night the lights of the homes immediately across and on the tree-lined ridge above. There's a very good sized outdoor patio 'room' with a fire pit, roof overhead and lighting for evening entertaining on the lake that's not included in the square footage. We even have a dock in case we take up kayaking (fat chance).
We negotiated our own deal and will be bringing in realtors to handle the paperwork. SO lucky to find this; it's an exceptional home and if it had gone on the market it would have been scooped up in days and a bidding war would have ensued. Am I sure it will happen? Yes; we visited again yesterday; Tom had already removed the oar over the garage door that had their name on it, sanded and repainted it to read: Bob and Jenise Stone. Sweetest thing ever.
So, new chapter: Jenise without a pantry. From a 13x6 cold room with appliance storage to a mere cupboard.
But Bob will be safe there. And that's all that really matters.
