It feels a bit odd making preparations to kick my own parents out of their bedroom in the house they built.
Awkward!!
With time running out before school starts, it has become depressing clear that they new space WILL NOT be ready for us to live in. It might be painted, but won’t have any flooring, bathroom fixtures, kitchen cabinets or appliances, etc. This means that we will be trying to live simultaneously in the space my parents currently occupy.
Julie and I figured we would just be “roughing it” for awhile and finishing things as we go. We’ve done it before and are happy to do it again. Some of our favorite memories are from such times.
My father however had different ideas. His plan is to move himself and Mom into the unfinished basement and turn the house’s master bedroom over to Julie and I. And he wants to do it soon. Before we move in. So that’s is what we are moving toward!
We knew this was the plan, and would eventually happen. But actually taking the steps to bring it to pass is rather… awkward. I’ve been jokingly telling people that we are “kicking my parents out and taking over” for a while, but it feels odd to have my parents working hard to kick themselves out.
The Steps Of Kicking Them Out
This week we gave up on the deck project (postponed it) and turned our attention to the basement. We spent just one day (Tuesday) cleaning out the space that is going to turn into my parents apartment. Yesterday we built the ‘exterior’ walls to trim out the cement walls. Today we almost completed laying down some subfloor particle board to strengthen up the flooring.
We will have to finish off the bathroom down there shortly, but I think when the flooring is done that Dad is planning on moving their bed down into the unfinished space. He says this is so that Julie and I can have a space to move into. I suspect that he is also secretly looking forward to living (and more importantly, sleeping) in the coolest part of the house – the basement.
My parents say that if the basement is too rough for them that they’ll just stay in the motorhome. They are taking it on vacation in just a few weeks anyway and so this is a very feasible and sensible plan. That’ll give us time to keep cleaning/organizing/building to improve the house space for all of us.
Hard To Do?
We’ve been witnessing how hard it has been for my parents to let go of some of the things they’ve collected/stored for years. As we make this transition I imagine it is going to be even harder to do. They’ve been living in a huge house for years all by themselves. To now try to downsize that into a small corner of the same house will stress the emotional limits I’m sure.
Thankfully we don’t actually have much to move into the house. All of the furniture and decorations will stay for the time being (hopefully without the kiddos breaking them). We don’t have dishes or appliances either. So moving/downsizing my parents is really a matter of condensing and moving clothing and a few mementos.
Hopefully that won’t prove to be too difficult!