Retirement Early Days

Ann’s been retired for just over a month now, but most of it really didn’t count because we took off for Portugal 3 days after she was technically retired.  And while our trip wasn’t really a vacation, it was so out of the normal routine that it can’t quite be considered indicative of what her retirement would be like.  Then, of course, the week after we got back we jet-setted to San Francisco to hand in our visa applications.  So last week was our first week back where I was working and Ann was . . .  well, retired.  Even if being retired hasn’t fully hit her yet.  So what did Ann do her first week of freedom?

Ann, being Ann, couldn’t just sit around waiting for me to process through everything that’s happened the past month, and then figure out everything that needs to be done between now and departure day.   Face it, Ann is not the kind of person to sit around and do nothing (especially when there are things to do) and the massive to-do list was going to take another weekend (last weekend) to get to. 

So almost immediately upon our return, even before we took off for San Francisco, Ann started pressing me to convert the floor plans we got from Sr. Gomes (our landlord) into a digital form that she could play with.  I wound up finding a cheap but simple (a bit too simple it turns out, but we made it work) application that allowed me to draft the floor plans for the house.  And while the measurements aren’t entirely precise (there were only a few measurements shown in the diagrams), the plans had been xeroxed several times (which means they’ve grown or shrunk by several percent - so the actual scale is off a bit), and there were obvious differences between the photographs of the house as-built compared to the floor plans, I was still able to create a shell for each of the floors, and then let Ann have at it.

Since we’ve rented an unfurnished house, we’ve decided that we’re going to have to ship most of our household goods just to keep the house from being totally empty.  (Thank goodness I spent last weekend doing our taxes and fortunately found out that, yet again, I’ve overpaid my estimated quarterly taxes.  We’ll need it for shipping I suspect.). So Ann started measuring all of our stuff and played interior designer for a week.

This is what she came up with!

Let’s start out with the first floor.  You enter into the foyer (the door on the bottom right) and Ann wants a shoebox bench to keep our shoes, and a rack to hang jackets.  From there, you take the left set of stairs up onto the first floor.

Towards the back is the living room. One of the two big purchases we’ll have to make (hopefully ordering and arriving to the house before we get there) is a much bigger couch than the one we have now.  We’ll also eventually get a coffee table, but a couch is key (please keep the couch-potato comments to yourself).  However, Ann will supplement that with several of our existing cabinets and tables identified by number on the plans.  Behind the couch is the dining area, where we’ll put our current table and chairs.

Moving into the kitchen area we’ll be able to put our buffet server to good use and probably not much else.  We’ll eventually need to get a small table for daily eating, which is shown as well.  One of the things that makes me sure the dimensions are off is the open central space in the kitchen.  In the photographs it looks really wide-open; in the drawing, it’s a bit tight.  Especially since we were sure it was wide enough to place an island (we have one from Ikea we scouted out and liked).  So, if it’s as wide as the photographs, we’ll likely get an island in there to give us (read: Ann) more counter space for making meals.

Moving up to the second floor is where things begin to get interesting.

We’ll be using two of the bedrooms as dedicated bedrooms.  The other pre-move purchase we’ll be making is a bed.  That bed will ultimately either go into the master bedroom (at the top of the plans) permanently, or will eventually get moved to the guest suite when our existing bed arrives from the States.  Our bedroom will be able to take advantage of some items currently in our bedroom to complement the built in wardrobes.  Ultimately, we’ll want to have a bench between the wardrobes to make annoying things like putting on socks a whole lot easier.

I think Ann had the most fun planning the guest suite, which is on the bottom left of the floor plan.  And a suite it will be with sitting chairs, a small secretary’s desk and its own changing bench.  The suite will take time to complete (the tax refund wasn’t that good!) but there will immediately be a bed and of course the build in wardrobes for guests to use (yes, that guest list is growing).

The third bedroom will be Ann’s office.  I’ll be stealing her big desk, but she’ll be stealing mine (at least for starters) and taking advantage of existing furniture to have a pretty complete office once our household goods arrive.  

Also note that Ann took the time to show what each of the bathrooms will be like.  Yes, Ann will have an executive wash room!

Next we drop down two floors to the ground floor (in Europe floor #1 is not the ground floor, it is the first floor up).  There we have the garage, my office, the laundry room and another bathroom.  Here’s where I had to deviate from the plans a bit.  Tried as I may, I could not replicate the nice curved wall that separates the garage from the hallway, so I made it a straight line.  It’s good enough for planning in the other rooms.  

In the garage, Ann wants to place an existing bench we have (for putting on and taking off shoes) and to have a place to hang wet clothes.  And no, I don’t think we’ll be buying a Porsche for the garage.  In the hall outside the garage door will be a place for us to hang keys and our coats as well.

My office will take advantage of the extra working space afforded by Ann’s L-shaped desk, along with a sitting chair from our living room, and bookshelves and cabinets that are in my current office.  Ann’s thinking that our home router should be located in my office to ensure that I have a good connection for work.  We’ll also be able to put some filing cabinets in my office too and a place to put my working files.  Of course, Ann and I will be shipping our wonderful Aeron chairs for our offices.

We’re not exactly sure how the laundry room will look (it wasn’t completed yet when we were there), so we’ll have to wing that one once we get there.

Last, we descend once more to the basement.  It will be divided into three main areas.  On the very bottom, separated by a hard wall (with big windows in it) will be a fairly large storage area where, for the short term at least, we’ll be storing our overlanding gear while we await delivery of our new vehicle in 2022.  That circle thing to the upper left corner of the room is the central vac that was hanging on the wall when we were there.  

The main basement room will be divided in two by an existing wall unit from Ann’s office, and possibly another wall unit and a screen (Ann has scoped out several).  The lower living area will take advantage of our existing couch and side table.  We’ve discussed the possibility of getting a hide-a-bed loveseat for those instances when we have multiple people coming to visit (Guys?).  

Moving to the upper part of the basement diagram you get to our print room.  This was the item that was on the top of our “if we can find a place that allows for one it would be great!” list. Which is why this place was an incredible find. The print room will take a bit of time to implement, but we will definitely have a good starter for the room.  One of the first purchases we’ll be making after we arrive is an office desk for me to work on until our household goods arrive.  We’ve found a fairly large, elevating desk at Ikea that should do the trick both in the short term in my office and for the long term in the print room.  Eventually we hope to have work spaces for the printer and tables to lay out prints and other printing/photography materials as we’re working with them.  We’ll likely need a monitor downstairs to tweak images that we’re printing, as well as places to store print paper (better than the storage containers we use now) as well as prints.  Ann also has been researching solutions for hanging prints on the wall for viewing that we can easily rotate.  As you can see, it could wind up occupying the length of the right-hand wall.

For the blog post I clipped the floor plans from the overall layout that Ann had prepared.  The image below gives you an idea of the thoroughness of Ann’s efforts this week.  

Not only do we have the floor plan diagrams, we have each of our existing pieces of furniture identified, and the measured dimensions (in centimeters) of each.  Which means that if we want to experiment with other arrangements, we can.

We’re so excited!  If the house turns out anything like these plans, we’ll be loving it.  

Thanks Ann!