Old and New

As my old house gets closer to ready to sell, I am becoming nostalgic as it is a particularly beautiful home.  So why am I moving?  It doesn't work well for us as a family.

My "old" two story foyer at Christmastime

It doesn't work for a 4 car family. We have to constantly shuffle around cars every morning and evening. You could say that it only temporary as my children will fly the coop before long, but whenever my grown family will come home to visit or whenever we have visitors, we will have the same annoying problem.

Photo of "old" great room

Another reason it doesn't work is it doesn't flow to fit the way we live. We walk in, kick off our shoes, put down our bags and go about our business... the foyer door and kitchen door become littered with, shoes, and bags, and mail and stuff like that, and with 4 adults in the house, it gets a bit overwhelming to stay on top of.  With a proper mud room and foyer closet, the new house will hopefully work better with the way we use the house.

Finally, we needed to move because I was having a safety issue with the stairs.  I have very big feet (and the stairs are quite small) and a numbness problem with my leg. I had taken to falling on the stairs regularly. My first inclination was to get a first-floor master, but instead, we are getting an upstairs laundry room, right outside the master closet, so that will mean I don't have to carry clothes up and down the stairs. Plus the new stairs are bigger and wider.

On the negative side, the old house is far more dramatic than the new house with its two story foyer and great room and soaring ceilings, but we just don't live for that anymore.

The new house, on the other hand, feels so low maintenance. The type of counters and tiles, the wall to wall hardwood floors I have chosen, and the simplicity of design. All in all, it will be smaller than the old home, but the two main floors are bigger in the square footage because there are not two story rooms which can cause a loss of square footage.

Btw, my realtor friend took aerial photos of the house in progress... Isn't that cool?