This is something a little different for me - it's NOT about traveling, but about "the little house" we're building in our back yard for my momma. She lives by herself in LaPorte, about 45 minutes away from our house in HOuston. Since she's mostly blind (macular degeneration) she is dependent on other folks (mostly us) for getting out to doctor appointments, the grocery store, drugstore, etc. This is a source of frustration for everybody involved, so the best thing seemed to be to bring her closer.
Not as close as right in the house, though! Two grown women in one house, let alone one kitchen, just didn't seem to be a good idea, so we settled on tearing down our detached garage & replacing it with a small house - not a garage apartment, since manuevering the stairs might be tough, but a place where she could live on the ground floor, with a loft area above for visitors.
So my son Nick & I got busy. My husband George is a silent partner, mostly in the sense of "Leave me out of this please, my life is complicated enough." We found an architect, Gail Schorre, and in the fall of 2006 started making plans. And kept on & on in a never-ending process. Our first set of plans priced out too expensive, so we changed over to having only the ground floor - but having seen the nicer place had a hard time adjusting to the smaller concept. Back to the full-blown idea, after a visit to the credit union to get a home equity loan for most of the cost. Fifteen years, when I was about to hit the magical 59 1/2 where I could seriously think about retirement. But first things really must come first.
The garage was 18 feet square, a "two-car garage" by 1930's standards, when cars were skinny & tall, not low & wide like they are today. We hardly ever tried to put a car in it, it was too much of a squeeze. Not to say it was empty - after 30 years in the house, we had filled it up with the boys' old GI Joes & Star Wars toys, old paint cans, camping gear, old furniture, etc. etc. etc. The first job was emptying it, and a lot of junk ended up on the porch & the boys's things, in the house again. A major defeat for me, I wanted them to go through everything & give away what they didn't take with them. Maybe another time?
In March 2007 we started tearing down the garage, board by board, nail by nail, so that we could use the perfectly good 80-year-old wood to build a shed for the displaced lawnmover & garden tools. But the shed is another story. A story that gets longer & more complicated as time passes.
Two results:
- a bare slab
- lots & lots of wood
