You better buckle your seat belts cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride. I'm glad overall that I took my MIL in but it certainly has taken a lot of adjusting. The best advice I can give you is set some boundries now, and be prepared to change them as time goes on. Give her ( if possible) her own living space separate for yours. We are lucky enough to have two bedrooms and a bath on one end of our home that we have converted into an "apartment" (she calls it that) for her. She has a bedroom and a sitting TV type room and it has her furniture from her home in it arranged the way she likes it.(usually messy) She can get up and watch tv at all hours of the night if she wants, talk on the phone or do whatever in her space. She has her own bathroom full her of her stuff.( older people seem to have a lot of lotions and ointments and such for some reason) I no longer allow her to cook because she set fire to the kitchen 3 times but she is allowed to use the micro ( with supervision--she has been known to punch in 15 minutes to warm a roll). At night I unplug this stuff because she does get up a lot. She isn't doing this stuff to be spitefull or naughty--she just has lost the ability to think and reason. You cannot be angry or upset because she truly cannot help what she has become. When she first moved in it was stressful because she loved her things and would often remove my pictures and pillows to replace with her stuff. It really bugged me. Now she has a place that she can have her things and I can still have mine. As far as food choices, she's been with us for two years now and seems to enjoy what I cook. If she has a craving for something special I'm always willing to fix it for her and let her help me do the prep if she can. The dementia, physical weakness and mobility have really limited her on what she can do. She likes to sometimes sit in the kitchen while I cook just to have some girl talk. (thats another story--Ive been having the same "girl talk" for two years now--she forgets what she tells me) There are gonna be days that you will be so frustrated that you cant breath and you want to go screaming in the woods. This will consume your life. Eventually everything you do will have to be planned around her. Think long and hard about taking this on. For us it started out that "MOM was a little ditsy and had to stay with us after Dad died. She certainly had more ability to care for herself then. Be fully prepared to deal with the situation if they start to loose those abilitys--chances are they will. I wish you a lot of luck with this. Let us know how it's going for you and remember this site is a great place to ask or vent or rant. BELIEVE ME--it has been my saving grace to have a place to go where people understand what it's like.

Final Plans - have incorporated most suggestions that made sense. -Back middle bathroom has tub in front, door moved to left to leave room for towel rack or hooks. -master shower widened to full 4 feet X 5'10" with head on back wall to allow for possible doorless shower. - front right bedroom closet squared off. - all kids bedroom closets now have slider doors to allow for full mirrors (have them now and work well). - worked out the pocket door on the master toilet room - it fits okay - am going with double hung windows in front of house, but casements on sides and back. Casements are smaller for the same egress requirements and allow for more wall space in bedrooms Still some small cleanup on the plans, but pulled the trigger on the construction drawings. thanks to everyone for all the assistance. Don't think I would be at this point without all the interaction and advice.

The appraisal was low so we're into cash more than the usual 20%. This part is well over that point. The re-appraisal for the conversion may go better, but we wanted to keep the loan kinda low anyway. It helps to remind myself it's cash since there's not any of the normal advantage of the attic being something you could finance in a first mortgage, as compared to other types of improvements (pool, outbuilding) that would be cash or some other loan vehicle if you wanted to borrow. The drawing shows it as unfinished. We didn't intend to finish the space right off, just have better storage and potential to finish, so there's no repercussions on the loan for not finishing. It costs $30k to have the potential to make it living space later; it'd be a fair piece more to actually finish the space, and we're not really sure we ever would. We designed the downstairs to meet all our real living needs. If finished, the attic would be used only by the people with good knees (kid/kids/me?). And it would be a rather tunnel-like space. I'm amazing myself how unenthused I am by it after a good 6-8 weeks of thinking I just had to have it. Good idea on the script for a lap pool but he's not a fan of doctors and wouldn't convey enough to a doc to get the script anyway. He's lived with the knees for years, and the back is intermittent. But-for realizing that he can't carry the baby upstairs to bed safely, we'd probably keep living as we do where he climbs the stairs exactly once a day very slowly without complaining. We've talked before about putting an infinity pool in the garage to help with his knees but since he doesn't complain it doesn't rise to the top of the to-do list.

Emmers! Welcome. I cannot imagine moving my 5 cats without serious trauma .. for ME! Good luck with this new home, new place, new people, new everything! It's a wild ride!! Shicksal, what happened with the builder and his estimate? Did you have conversation? I still have a feeling, as someone else mentioned, that the house will be a wreck before anything's done, then what the city will do? require? Who knows. I, too, like MTDoug's philosophy. I am also one of getting rid of crap. ' Texas_Gem, that's wild. I'm willing to bet this weekend you'll be showing us the entire place closed in and ready for insulation! Unfortunately it quickly packs up with new crap. The difficult thing is, too, that I have purpose for the crap. In the last month, I've made several things out of crap, without having to buy anything. Well, the raised garden bed was a bale of hay ($6.00), the potting bench a piece of corner bead ($8.00) and today, inside, my apothecary drawers. I find these spice/apothecary drawers to be the most useless pieces of crap in the world. Almost as useless as base, reach-in cabinets or 12" wall cabinets. However, on a 16' run, they give the eye a break. Plus, I have 4 sets of them. Don't ask. But, I'd already bought the corbels from a true artist on Etsy. Absolutely lovely. No idea what I was going to do with them. I've used primer I have, I'm going to use a SW sample paint for the bottoms, sealing it with the dark, paint base I already have. So, crap already here. I also came to a roadblock with the lovely oak I've been planing. It's dimensional, with live edges. I mean, BARK on the edges!! What can I build to showcase that, since it's incredible? I was planning cabinet doors, probably, but I'd have to joint that off. Noooooooo... Ideas? Hmmm... No phone. Pizza and Martinis? I'll take the latter. YEAH! Martinis and pizza!! What could be better, except talking on the phone with someone about how great it is. Sorry for the inconvenience. I hope all is uploaded somewhere. Shicksal, the reason for stealing the phone isn't to use it, it's to sell it. With a SIM card, anything's possible. Interestingly enough, many phones now have GPSs or programs to shut them down, so even that lucrative activity is slowly thwarted. In the meanwhile, Crap of a different sort. Ok. Off to sand and paint. What can I make with that gorgeous oak? We're talking 6-8' boards. 9-11 3/4" wide.... I have hung 90" of upper cabinets in the last 2 days, though. Gotta put the doors on, but oh, so pretty. And OFF the counter. Cal_quail, I'm so relieved for you. I was holding my breath.