Garden

Reply to: My elderly mum dropped a bombshell out of the blue that she was struggling to cope and wanted to look at sheltered accommodation. I'm an only child and she lived 25 miles away. I work full time have 3 grown up children all living at home and although they are grown up the demands of being a parent still exist. Anyway we looked at some places and quite frankly they were horrible and she wouldn't be able to take her beloved dog so we decided to both sell our properties and try to find somewhere that would house me and hubby plus 3 kids and our dog plus mum and her dog. Trying to sell 2 homes and buy all at the same time nearly sent me insane! In the end mum completed on hers 3 months before me but with the help of her buyer and a dear friend we managed to keep a roof over her head until everything else fell in to place. With the capital she had she was able to make her part of the house disabled friendly and 3 Years later it's working really well. She has her own kitchen bathroom etc. Since we have been together she has a full mastectomy, several falls and lots of illnesses that have kept in bed for a couple of weeks at a time and as hard as all that was, it would of been 100 times harider had she lived an hour away. My kids pop in and tell her about their day. Mum has the dogs for company during the day and a chauffeur on tap if she wants to go anywhere. After 32 years of being married and living away from her I have had to get used to the "where are you going" and "what time will you be home" and the rolling of the eyes when I say late but touch wood it's working out quite well!

Q

Reply to: Just a quick update - this is our solution to the Lego storage problem. It’s not perfect but it’s a million times neater. This is / was the kids play room, but as they’re now older teens, it’s more of a second sitting room. We used to have a bookcase, tv unit and a gas wood burner on this wall - we took out the burner, bricked up the hole from the flue and have had a new storage unit made to fit the gap. It can hopefully house our book collection, lego and clutter all in one. (Fingers crossed!!)

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