The Fun Part of Moving Forward

March brought me to another benchmark along the path to the next chapter of my life---the long awaited appointment at the continuum care campus where I’ll be moving the spring of 2021. The purpose of this one-on-one appointment was to pick out my paint colors, countertops, flooring choices and my free $5,000 worth of upgrades for signing up in pre-construction. So let’s go on a tour. 

My unit is 1,057 square feet, the next to the smallest of the five floor plans available in the 52 units complex. (The smaller one is only 60 square feet less.) The 52 units are spread out between three buildings, each with three floors. The largest units face a lake. My place will be the first door off the main lobby of my building and about 25 to 30 feet across the lobby from my door is the gym which will have a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooks the lake. My plan is to hop on an exercise bike a half hour before sunset so I can get lost in the view, lost in watching the water fowl flying in to bed down for the night and the sky change colors. Maybe then I won't notice that I hate what I'm doing.

When you open the door to my unit you’ll be coming into the kitchen area. I picked out white cabinets to go with a white subway tile backsplash and a medium gray quartz countertop, stainless steel appliances and medium gray vinyl flooring that simulates wood.

Looking through the unit to the far wall are white-framed floor-to-ceiling windows. The same vinyl flooring will run throughout the kitchen/dining and living areas with an area rug defining the living area---I’ll buy that after moving in. My painting easel will go in front of the corner windows opposite the door going out to the patio. The wall color will be white Chantilly Lace. On the opposite wall of the kitchen area the first door goes to a laundry room, the next door goes to a half bath and then there’s a five foot wide, sliding pocket door to a room they call a den. That room has an eight foot long closet on one end and a window on the opposite wall. I have a drop-leaf table that my mom refinished that will fit in the closet and when the closet and one leaf of the table is open I can use it for sewing, cutting out quilt blocks or doing large jigsaw puzzles plus I'll have plenty of room left over to store all my craft supplies. That room will also hold a computer desk that I'll buy after I move in. The walls and flooring in the den/hobby room will be the same as in the main living area and I've got oriental style area rug to add blacks, blues and whites to the room.

The bedroom and master bath area will have smoke colored walls and the bedroom and walk-in closet will have gray carpeting. Both bathrooms will have a dark gray ceramic tile on the floor, white cabinets and the same countertop as in the kitchen. The bedroom decor will look like my current bedroom that you can find at this link. I’m sure my bland color choices sounds boring to some, but I never get tired of living with neutrals. I’d rather add color with things that are easily swapped out. Living with strong colors effects my moods too much and not in a good way. My main living area will start out borrowing accent colors from my bedroom quilt of aqua and coral, but I could easily change those accents down the road to blues, greens and/or yellows.

 

Smoke

For my $5,000 worth of free upgrades they gave me a menu list of things I could pick from---crown molding, a fireplace, tray ceilings, a shower in the half bath and I picked a closet system in the master closet, the custom paint color in the master suite and a gas instead of an electric range. I will still have $1,000 left to spend after move-in to spend on tweaks like adding an outlet plug in the den closet, putting a shelf above the washer and dryer and getting one of their 3’ x 8’ storage units for the end of my assigned parking place. Signing up in pre-construction also got me $10,000 off the purchase price that people reserving units now are no longer getting, and we get to pick out our underground parking spaces out in the order we each paid our first deposits. I'll be the fourteenth person to pick so my odds of being near my elevator are good, given the fact that those ahead of me probably won't all be in my building. My laundry room's back wall shares that wall with the elevator so I won't have far to go to get to my car.

I went to this appointment at the sales office with two, typewritten pages of questions and I came home all pumped up and happy again. Tim, the-son-I-wish-had, is coming over Monday to take another load of stuff to the auction house and when I got home from picking out my finishes I started adding more to the auction pile, bringing my total of items up to a hundred. I am letting go of things I've been too attached to up until now. I just hope we don't get a late spring snow storm that would keep people away from the auction. When the decisions to let go are hard ones, I at least want that balanced off with fair prices.   ©

My closet won't be exactly like this because it's a walk-in that wraps two walls. This is the generic handout they gave me. Closer to move-in I'll get a say in the design's layout and the elements in ii.