moving/renovating

The comments on yesterdays post have me focusing back to the issue of whether we should move, which I put aside before we went away and haven't gotten back to except to ask some questions of the realtor who manages the other house.

Our current house has living room/kitchen/family room/bedrooms on the main level plus a big finished basement, in which John has an office. But he comes in and puts everything down in the kitchen and family room. I've been trying for a year to get him to bring some order to his stuff, with only brief success. So part of my wanting to move is to force us to organize and simplify and get rid of some of our excess stuff.

The other house is the first house we lived in here. We still own it, but it is rented to students until May 9, 2009. It has an attic with a bedroom and bath, a main floor with kitchen, den, dining room, living room, one bedroom and bath, and a basement with three finished rooms and one unfinished room.

It is the basement level that I would like to make into a handicapped accessible space for John. The basement is above ground on one end, walk in with no steps from a carport (under a screened porch). The layout is two long rooms side by side with windows and then a square central room with the bathroom on one side of it plus a separate walk-in shower and a sink on the other (at one point it was an apartment with its own kitchen). The stairs up to the main level are in the central room. The floor plan drawing below is from when I first moved there and I suspect is not accurate, but it gives a sense.

I'm imagining that the long room with the best windows (bottom right on the plan) would be John's sitting room, with a really comfortable recliner, TV, computer, and probably a daybed set up to serve also as a sofa. The central room would have a kitchen/work table and lots of shelves and a small refrigerator and microwave, maybe a bed. The other long room would be our son's bedroom when he is home from college.

I start thinking about it and I get daunted. Moving would be so much work. I might make a handicapped accessible space for John and then end up not keeping him at home. But I do know that whenever the time comes when I am alone I don't want to be in the current house, I want to be in the old house. And I would really like to move while John can help. He was initally dubious about the idea because he remembers the finished basement of the old house as not very nice, but he has become more positive.

I tend to focus on trying to find an architect or contractor because that feels like the easiest first step. I want to have someone look at the space this summer and give me an opinion about whether it will work well or not. Both houses are paid off and I just got a home equity line of credit on the current house so we have some financial flexibility.