My House: a Visual

When my daughter and her husband decided to help me out and move in with me, none of us realized how much it would cost in more ways than one.

The idea was that they would renovate the basement in to an apartment for them. It would not include a kitchen or a bathroom. We would share those rooms on my floor. I live in a two bedroom ranch and the size of the second bedroom is the same size as some people’s closets.

The first problem was what to do with everything stored in the basement. I knew if I was with the kids when they went through everything, nothing would get thrown away. I keep everything, just in case.

The following is a Google Earth photo of my neighborhood. My sister lives one street over to the left of my street, fourth house on the right. You can see her red jeep sort of (if you have really good eyesight) in her driveway.

My house is hidden by trees.

Now when I have another police story you can picture the neighborhood–and there ARE more police stories.

This story has more to do with the renovation that took place and the cleansing my house went through while I was in the hospital for three weeks with pneumonia last February.

This is a photo of the basement before my kids had it renovated. My son was in Florida for the winter and had no idea we had torn the walls down in his room and packed up all his stuff.

This use to be his bedroom. The kids had already torn down his walls when this was taken. If you look carefully on the ceiling to the right there is a dark board. That’s where my husband axed out the ceiling during the fiasco when he burned the kitchen table in the fireplace.

This is the rest of the basement.

The above photo is the actual dumpster that the kids filled five times with stuff from the basement, upstairs etc. So that basement was going to be where they would live. They gave up a nice cottage to live in my cellar.

The above three photos show the basement a few months ago. They’ve added and changed it a little.The top photo is their living room. the middle photo is a wide hallway with a big picture window on the left with a view of the backyard. The bottom photo is their bedroom. They also have an outside entrance too.

They have a fridge so they can keep their snacks away from me. They keep their beer in there too. I wish my daughter had done the fridge meme.  I’d love to know what’s in her fridge.  On second thought maybe it’s better that I don’t know.   There is another room off the hallway that has the furnace in it but it is big enough so that when they get the money they can build a bathroom in there. They don’t need a kitchen because I do all the cooking. I call them on the intercom phone and just say “dinner’s ready”. They come and get their plates and go right back downstairs.

Then my ex- husband moved in after being dumped by his girlfriend and we had to put walls in the little bedroom for him. My son had body slammed all the walls when he was doing heroin. We also had put everything we wanted to keep in there and now we had to find a place for all that stuff. A lot of it went in the attic and a lot went into my son’s storage facility that he rented when he went to Florida.

I had to call him and tell him that when he came back up here he wouldn’t be able to live with us. It was hard to do but it was for his own good. Someday I’ll tell the story of his drug use. Right now I am happy that he is clean. He even called me the other day and told me he got a second job. Now he has a full time job and a part time job. My son who got fired from mostly every job he had is now working two jobs. Wow!!

So basically, everything I own is in my bedroom. I don’t have any photos of my bedroom. I love my room. It is my sanctuary. Everything I love is in it except my family. I like to get away from them sometimes and I am sure they like to get away from me sometimes. I talk a lot. Even when I am home alone I talk to the cats (and they listen to me and don’t give me any backtalk).