By Ann Burnside Love
Well, you were given a floor plan when you chose your apartment
or cottage, weren’t you? It showed the dimensions, didn’t it? Why should you
have to measure it yourself?
• Realistically, floor plans for retirement community homes
were designed when the building or cottage group was originally conceived. So,
the dimensions determined by architects may vary slightly as the actual working
drawings are produced. There’s a reason good carpenters “measure twice, cut
once.” Things change: administrators may hear from the sales office that more
future residents want a particular model apartment or villa and there’s less
demand than anticipated for another model. So they alter the model mix
accordingly, and, with that decision, room dimensions may shift. Be sure to
measure!
• Larger pieces of your furniture may require a precise fit:
Smaller will work but a few inches too big and now you can’t open the front
door properly, get into the hall closet, reach over to that windowsill, or get
both the dressers into the bedroom. Surely you don’t want to move that
treasured sofa, hutch, desk or carpet without knowing for sure it will actually
fit. In my own experience, my study was nine inches longer than on the floor
plan. Great! Now I have a space on one end to store tray tables and on the
opposite side tall things like my painting easel.
• What’s the take away here? All floor plans are estimates. Tape
measure in your pocket by now? The day before I moved, my daughter and I
measured and placed folded sheets, tablecloths and towels to mark the exact
place on the carpet that each piece was to be placed by the movers.
• And while you’re measuring, consider the aesthetics. Walk
around. Stand in the corners of each room. What direction does the light come
from? What exposure — north, south, east, west — will you have? How about your
view? Are there gardens, trees or landscaping features? Can you orient any
furniture accordingly? May you plant your own flowers and bushes around your
villa? Will your small apartment balcony, like mine, work for container
gardening? My children refer to mine as “Mom’s Rainforest” — suggesting I use a
machete to get to my chairs. Pluses like these can positively affect your mood and/or
energy.
• Are there special features in your home that make a real
difference to you? Mine are the deep windowsills. My 40-year-old dwarf orange
tree is growing its annual crop on one. Cacti
live on the one behind my computer, because they don’t need much water near my cluster
of electrical gear. Then there’s the double windowsill in my bedroom, which
belongs to Vanessa, the cat. She observes the weather, passing birds and dogs,
and is clearly in charge of the modest traffic in the parking lot below.
Thus, it’s not all how your furniture fits, but also how
your new home feels to you! Carry on!
*****
Ann’s blog, Love
Notes: Inside Retirement Living, appears here each Thursday.
Living gives many retirees that freedom to become more active while, at the same time, at a fraction of the cost of traditional home ownership.
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