Ensure the whole family is 100% on board before renovating your home.
Hey there. Sandy here with Sandy and Company. Today, I’m talking about making those big decisions for your family and how important it is to communicate.
I’m working on putting a second bathroom in my house. When I first bought the house, I knew that it would be helpful to have a second bathroom, but it wasn’t necessary immediately because when we had talked about possibly having my mom move in down the road, it was okay if we only had one bathroom to start.
Now, as I have taken a look at what we will need to do when my mom moved in with me, she was likely going to need a space that not only was one level but also had space for a wheelchair because currently, she gets around in the house with a wheelchair.
So if we’re going to add a bathroom, it really needed to have space for her to turn around in a wheelchair. And that involved actually making my interior space bigger. I have a section at the back of my house that is a closet and a walkway that’s accessed from the outside, and we were talking about bumping that out to the edge and turning it all into interior space.
Well, when we start talking about turning exterior space into interior space, that gets a lot more expensive. I was talking a lot with contractors, and all that to say, the bill was going up and up and up. So I finally just had to say, you know what? I need to talk to mom.
When it really came right down to it, she really didn’t plan to move in with me because as long as she could stay in an independent house, she wanted to be in her independent house. Yes, it’s interdependence. She had help from the people around us, but she didn’t want to make the change sooner to move into mine. And that is fine.
When we start thinking about what needs to happen for other people in the family, it’s important to have that conversation with them. Sometimes, I hesitate to have that conversation because I don’t want to set up expectations, or maybe I don’t want people to get excited because it might not work out in the long run. What this really did for me was once we had that conversation and realized what it was that she didn’t want, then I could do what worked for me.
Honestly, I didn’t know I had to really go back and think about it in terms of what works for me in this house; what do I need? As it turned out, I don’t really need as much space and I am going to keep just the interior space being the interior space. That will save me a lot of money, time, effort, and hassle from the county. So I’m very excited in that respect.
So what am I trying to say here? Talk with your family members, and if you are making decisions about how best for mom and dad to live with you, or how best for grandkids and kids to live with you, and how you need to move your house around.
If you are making decisions that involve changing your house, spending money, and making major life changes about how you’re living in your space, have that conversation. Make sure everyone’s on board. Because maybe, just maybe, you’re putting too much thought into something that isn’t what everyone else wants as well.
If that resonates with you, if that’s part of what happens in your life, then I hope this has been helpful. Because for me, I try to fix everything and then present a solution. I try to think of all of the possibilities and make sure that I am doing the best for everyone. Sometimes, I can just make things a lot simpler, and I’m glad to do that.
If I can help you go through that process and understand what it will take to make things happen for other people to live in your house, or for you to live in your house differently, or maybe to change your house so that you can live in a house the way you want to.
Call me, message me, contact me at (425) 422-7372, or email me at Sandy@SandyAndCompany.com. I am here for you. Whatever I learn from working with myself and my own family, I am more than happy to help you out with yours. Have a super blessed day!
