Why I built a granny annex…one day changed everything?

The day that changed my life [and that of my family] was the day that my dad died. Lots of things happened from that moment onwards.

I lost my best friend and I was shocked into a world that I didn’t realise existed, that of my dad not being around forever.

Life was about to change in all sorts of ways and fortunately for me I had a four week old daughter to help keep me busy.

My dads death however set in motion a chain of events that as you read would change all our lives forever.

With my dad gone it left my mum alone in an old house, she did have friends around, a part time job and her old dog for company.

All seemed well and we saw her as much as we could. Having a young family though, mean’t rushed sunday lunches, an odd evening staying over but no plans to do anything different.

Until a couple of things happened.

First she was conned out of a lot of money by cold callers. This upset me more than her, and soon after started a period of illness which knocked the energy out of he. This frightened me, as she had always been so strong.

At the same time she talking about the house being too big and whether she should move into sheltered housing, ok, but without her dog this I was not going to let happen!

As a result of the illness a series of visits to hospital were needed and fortunately my wife who worked part time as a nurse was able to take her.

During one of these visits my mum joked that my wife as a nurse could look after her in the future instead of her own patients.

It was this discussion that led to us into looking in more detail about us all living together.

We first looked around to find somewhere we could buy together with some form of annex attached, but after about 6 months of fruitless searching and the chances of selling 2 houses seemingly rather distant, we decided to look at other options including redesigning mums place.

To start this we sketched out some ideas and got a few quotes from builders on what we thought possible, slowly an idea started to form but in order to progress things needed an architects imput.

I will never forget the moment the architect called. He carefully and thoughtfully walked around mums bungalow and announced that my idea wouldn’t work.

He took one look at mums large double garage asked her the question “how about converting the garage, you could live in there”! Well we all waited for a reaction and to my amazement she said – ok sounds like something I can do.

Where do we start.

And from that day well an awful lot happened. The drawings went to planning and with a few tweaks were accepted. The builders started in the wettest winter for years, which presented big challenges but the new living space started to rise from the ground……until we ran out of money and work had to stop.

In order to continue we had to sell our house, which took us nearly a year, 2 sales fell through and many times my mum wished “that she had never started the project”.

Living in a building site for over a year at 82 could not have been fun, but there was no turning back.

Eventually we did manage to sell, release money and get the project completed just before Christmas. It had taken nearly a year, but mums new home was now finished. A really lovely place and mum and her dog moved in.

It is now nearly 3 years since we finished and mum moved next door to her old house. We have now recycled her old bungalow into our family home, and now all live together as a family.

We know where and how mum is and wouldn’t have it any other way.

As it has been so successful I want to help and encourage others to do the same.

This is the main reason for starting MGLivingSpaces to share stories and advice.

If you would like to learn more please drop me line.

David@MGLivingspaces.com

Thanks
David