Project Edmonton

House 4B

Emily and I are considering our future living options. We almost certainly will settle in Edmonton, Alberta, and we will probably be living in a house with Emily's mother, brother, and grandmother. That's where things get complicated...

First off, we all need to be living either within the same building, or extremely close to each other.

• The responsibility of overseeing Timothy's care will eventually be ours, and we can only do that if we are very close by. We don't want to place Timothy in an institution or a group home, as he is sufficiently high-functioning that he learns from the people he is with. In close contact with a real home environment, he can learn social skills. In a group home environment, he can learn to bite or scream.
• Emily's is a tight-knit family. While the extended family is huge, the immediate family is very small. We have always worked under the assumption that they would be living nearby, if not in the same residence. Yes, that means there will be 4 generations living under one roof.

However, we need to balance this with the need for independence:

• Emily and I would like to be able live and raise our family without necessarily involving other family.
• Emily's mother and grandmother can hopefully chase their own interests, without needing to worry about children and grandchildren all the time.
• Timothy must be living in an independent suite, else he will not qualify for funding. While we want to oversee his care, and spend time with him, the minute-by-minute caring is beyond our abilities.

That leaves us with a rather difficult housing situation. We need a house with:

• Separate space for me, Emily, and children.
• Separate space for Timothy.
• Separate space for Stella and Grandma Mak.
• Ground-floor access for Grandma.
• Three covered car parking spaces.
• Adequate (but not excessive) interior space.
• Support our family as the residents change over the next 40 years.
• Possible to lease out parts at times when there are fewer residents.
• Built on a fairly ordinary residential site, so limited in size.
• Preferably under $600k, so not too extravagant

Our current idea is a bi-level or two-story house. The bottom floor consists of two independent suites with both internal and external access. The suites can be reconfigured in a couple of ways to create larger or smaller suites. It should also be possible to access Timothy's suite from the other in case of emergency or any issues. The livable floorspace should be under 1500sqft per floor, as anything larger starts to turn into a monster.

Being the geeks that we are, we've started using "The Sims 2" to consider house designs. :) By correlating Sims objects to real-world ones, I estimate that each square is about 3 feet by 3 feet in size, so we can even get a rough estimate of square footage.

The ground floor is obviously the most complex and where we've put most of our effort. We've just finished and uploaded our best design so far in a Picasa Web Album. Take a look, and see if you can maybe design anything better. This design is about 2500-2700sqft. :)