Recently, Michael and I found ourselves talking a bit about our house needs.
We've toyed with many different options to accommodate Ella and her accessibility. From adding on to our current house, to buying an accessible house, to building a new one from scratch...all of which would be extremely expensive (and WAY out of our budget any time soon).
But we also talked about how we don't truly know what Ella's needs will be in the future. With her current progress, we've started to have a new hope that maybe, just maybe, we won't need as many modifications as we once thought. But we don't know.
So it would be silly for us to start making major house decisions quite yet.
But there is one thing that we CAN do, that would help Ella tremendously.
Our basement.
When we bought this house, we immediately fell in love with the basement. We knew it would be the perfect "playroom" for our future children.
But unfortunately, it doesn't work for Ella.
The entire basement is carpeted, making it very difficult for Ella to use her little wheelchair down there. We also have a large slate pool table that takes up a large portion of the basement, forcing us to cram all the "kid stuff" to one side, which also makes it difficult for Ella to maneuver around.
So with the New Year, we've decided we are going to use some of the money that has been raised for Ella to make some new changes to our basement. Changes that we KNOW will help Ella RIGHT NOW.
One thing we're going to do is take out the bar that we have down there and replace it with cabinets/counters for storage space.
Another thing we're going to do is replace the carpet with wood laminate flooring (the same flooring we put on our first floor when Ella got her wheelchair).
Finally, we are going to say goodbye to our pool table (sniff sniff). Our family chipped in to buy the pool table for Michael for his 40th birthday five years ago. It was a great gift and we've had a lot of fun with it. But unfortunately, we haven't been able to use it as much as we'd like to lately (not much free time these days), and we've decided that Ella's needs are more important.
So we've found someone who would like to give it a new home. We hope they enjoy it as much as we have.
We're looking forward to making this "new" basement a true playroom that all THREE kids can enjoy together :)
We've toyed with many different options to accommodate Ella and her accessibility. From adding on to our current house, to buying an accessible house, to building a new one from scratch...all of which would be extremely expensive (and WAY out of our budget any time soon).
But we also talked about how we don't truly know what Ella's needs will be in the future. With her current progress, we've started to have a new hope that maybe, just maybe, we won't need as many modifications as we once thought. But we don't know.
So it would be silly for us to start making major house decisions quite yet.
But there is one thing that we CAN do, that would help Ella tremendously.
Our basement.
When we bought this house, we immediately fell in love with the basement. We knew it would be the perfect "playroom" for our future children.
But unfortunately, it doesn't work for Ella.
The entire basement is carpeted, making it very difficult for Ella to use her little wheelchair down there. We also have a large slate pool table that takes up a large portion of the basement, forcing us to cram all the "kid stuff" to one side, which also makes it difficult for Ella to maneuver around.
So with the New Year, we've decided we are going to use some of the money that has been raised for Ella to make some new changes to our basement. Changes that we KNOW will help Ella RIGHT NOW.
One thing we're going to do is take out the bar that we have down there and replace it with cabinets/counters for storage space.
Another thing we're going to do is replace the carpet with wood laminate flooring (the same flooring we put on our first floor when Ella got her wheelchair).
Finally, we are going to say goodbye to our pool table (sniff sniff). Our family chipped in to buy the pool table for Michael for his 40th birthday five years ago. It was a great gift and we've had a lot of fun with it. But unfortunately, we haven't been able to use it as much as we'd like to lately (not much free time these days), and we've decided that Ella's needs are more important.
So we've found someone who would like to give it a new home. We hope they enjoy it as much as we have.
We're looking forward to making this "new" basement a true playroom that all THREE kids can enjoy together :)
