My Neighbor Upstairs

"My Neighbor Upstairs..." Five years ago my daughter was a senior in high school and would be going away to college in a year. It was time for me to do some serious downsizing. My sister/best friend, Nancy suggested we buy a house together and share it. We have similar tastes, so it didn't take us long to find our house. We knew we wanted an older house and it had to be big enough to create two separate living spaces. We love each other, but hey...we knew what we needed to do to make it work. The house we bought is located in the historic district of our city and is adjacent to a university. That means we live in an eclectic neighborhood! The house is a craftsman-style bungalow and is just under a hundred years old. It was in pretty good shape, so our first priority was to create an apartment upstairs for Nancy. There are three bedrooms, each with a good size closet, and a huge bathroom upstairs. In the largest bedroom's closet we created a small efficiency kitchen.

That bedroom then became the living/dining room.

That left the space with two bedrooms and the bathroom, which are suiting Nancy very well.

She also has the whole outside as a canvas for her gardening, which you will see in upcoming posts. Nancy moved into her space and occupied the house for the year my daughter Kate was finishing high school. During that time I added a bathroom and an office, remodeled the kitchen and did lots of painting and cosmetic changes to my space below. (More about all that later.) Because I already had an established business named Buttermilk Cottage, we christened our "cottage" with the same name and have loved living here ever since!