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Dec
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Posted by maureen
December 29, 2006 |
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At some point in the decision of where to live when you retire you should ask yourself what do you want in your retirement home. It’s best to start with an open slate and make it your “dream house”. The easiest way to approach it is by assessing your new life style and planning accordingly. Begin by compiling a list which includes the style of house ,number of rooms, their size and their functions, plus any essential features along with garden and surround. Picture the rooms in your mind and how you plan to use them. Take the kitchen for instance; do you like to cook? Will you be cooking for mainly two or will you be entertaining a lot? Circumstances might dictate that you make changes along the way but you have a much clearer idea about what you are trying to achieve. This will help avoid making mistakes that you will regret later on. I am in the process of getting my retirement home clear in my mind and these are some of my thoughts to date
- Style of House: The house should be one storey. Although stairs are good exercise it makes better sense to have everything on one level particularly as you get older. I know that we can do a lot of the upkeep and repairs that we wouldn’t be able to do on a two storey house It will be a whole lot easier painting trim and making roof repairs on a ranch. We also don’t need as much square footage as we have now but I want lots of windows and great views.
- Number of Rooms: This need some careful thought because we have a large family and we love to have everyone over. On the other hand, we don’t want a house that is too big for our everyday needs. We can eliminate some rooms that get limited use now like the living room and the formal dining room The family room would be replaced with a modern, fully equipped media room that could handle large and small groups. The house would essentially be open plan and would include kitchen/breakfast area, media room with office space, master bedroom, spare bedroom, exercise room, utility room and double garage
- Double Garage. It should have ample room for two vehicles and “stuff’ and should be easy to get in and out of.
- Kids Room:. I want to be able to have the whole family stay whenever possible so I need to be able to sleep lots of grandchildren. I’m still wrestling with this one but I got a couple of ideas which I’ll share at a later date
- Garden and surround. A large porch and patio area would be a great place to celebrate all those family get together and takes away the need for a lot of square footage inside the house. I’ll have a couple of large farm style tables to seat everyone and these will be great for pots and flowers for the rest of the time I will be checking out the latest in built in grills and outside fires. I love to garden but will avoid the temptation of having a large expanse of grass and keep it smaller with more tiles for pots and containers
- Swimming pool: I would love to be able to start the day with a dip in the water. It would be great when the grandchildren come over too!
- Essential features: Hunt out the latest energy savers for the construction ( solar panel tiles on the roof) and latest technology for luxury details like heated tile floor and bath towel bars in the bathroom
This is ,of course, just a tentative list and it’s just my list I‘ll need to include my spouse’s thoughts and ideas and the final house might look very different. It will be interesting to see what his thoughts are!
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